Alleged nursery words and hypocorisms among Germanic kinship terms

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Abstract

By (re-)evaluating the etymologies of the three Proto-Germanic kinship terms *aiþīn-/-ōn- ‘mother’, *aiþma- ‘daughter’s husband’ and *faþōn- ‘father’s sister’ that are all claimed by at least some etymological handbooks to be nursery words or hypocorisms, I contend that we must abandon their nursery-word interpretations and rather regard them as inherited words derived from known Indo-European lexical material in a way that reveals important information on the Old Germanic society and its family pattern.
Original languageDanish
Title of host publicationUsque ad radices : Indo-European studies in honour of Birgit Anette Olsen
EditorsBjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen, Adam Hyllested, Anders Richardt Jørgensen, Guus Kroonen, Jenny Helena Larsson, Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead, Thomas Olander, Tobias Søborg
Number of pages14
Place of PublicationKøbenhavn
PublisherMuseum Tusculanum
Publication date2017
Pages207-220
ISBN (Print)9788763545761
Publication statusPublished - 2017
SeriesCopenhagen Studies in Indo-European
Volume8
ISSN1399-5308

Keywords

  • Faculty of Humanities
  • Germanic
  • Indo-European
  • kinship terminology
  • semantics
  • language history
  • etymology

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