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Re: Correct etymology of Geneviève/Genovefa
BtN says it might be Germanic, but there are numerous problems - this is a late Roman saints name, and the spelling is Roman, rather than Germanic or Celtic. for starters in late Latin /i/ is frequently lowered to /e/, and in Latin in general, G and C are interchangeable depending on whether the context calls for a voiced /g/ or an unvoiced /k/, whereas in Germanic, they are not. This makes matching anything to known Germanic or Celtic name elements difficult. Name elements may not be exclusively Germanic, but combine Latin, Celtic or Germanic elements in one name (and indeed, in East Germanic there will be Alan name elements as well, which later pass into broader circulation). Further, Saint's lives from this period are generally later fabrications and the stories often don't fit established historical facts - they have essentially been retconned. by the time of the purported St Genevieve, the Roman army, particularly in Gaul, was deeply Germanic - Frankish, Vandal, Gothic and Saxon troops filled the ranks from the lowest foot-soldier to Magister Militum. We expect Gallo-Romans at this stage to have Roman names, not Gallic, so when we find a non-Roman name, there is an expectation it will be "Germanic" (or possibly Alan). In regards to Genowefa, we can reconstruct an ancient Germanic *Gainawaifa, OHG *Geinaveif, Low German/Romanised Genavefa. Both Gain- and waif- are established thematic elements (unlike wif), the problem though is that they don't match any suitable recorded words to give us a meaning. Gain- is sometimes interpreted as the adverb/preposition "against", but this doesn't really make sense as a name element and may instead be an obsolete name for a type of weapon, cognate with gais- and gar-; waif- should in this case be a feminine noun/adjective (ironically wif is not), but no such word can be found - not unusual as the corpus is limited. the closest is the verb "wave" or possibly related verbs meaning "clothe, wrap", but a related noun is unrecorded except in the form wæfel "cloak", and as is usual for items of clothing, is masculine. There is another name-element Gin- (frequently Gim- before /b/ and /f/), another word for broad, immense which might also be Romanised as Gen-; and it may even be the Roman root Gen- itself in combination with the Germanic -waif.

This message was edited 7/27/2020, 8:42 PM

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Thank you. It makes a lot more sense now that you explain it.
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there's not really a lot of difference between Kuni and Geno - you may as well assume they mean the same thing in general. they're different derivatives (thus the differing stem) of the same Indo-European root with Latin genus (“kind, sort, ancestry, birth”), Ancient Greek γένος (génos, “kind, race”), Sanskrit जनस् (jánas, “kind, race”) and Celtic (*genos, famiy, clan, birth; used in names such as Old Welsh: Mor-gen; Gaulish: Ad-genus, Cintu-genus - the latter are presumably Romanized). The /i/ of Kuni results in umlaut of the u (OE Cyn-), in the late OE period then unrounded to /i/ to give modern English kin. There is, presumably, a noun based on the Germanic waif- root — English waif, from Anglo-Norman and Old French in the sense "stray, vagabond". A sense traveller, adventurer would fit the pattern of known themes (cf. feminine *waiþ "wandering, hunting/fishing"), but then again, the recorded gender of waif in Old French is masculine, not feminine (this doesn't mean there isn't a feminine noun — the -gard "court" theme has masculine and feminine variants with slightly different forms, as does the -frith "peace" theme — just that we don't know it).

This message was edited 7/28/2020, 9:17 AM

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That makes sense. So, can we assume that Genovefa means something similar to “woman of the people” or “woman of family” (if “wefa/waif” does indeed mean “woman”)?
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Dithematic names don't work like that. they don't create compounds with a new meaning, each element stands on it's own. It's possible Geno- means "family/kin" taken from Celtic or Latin, but probably more likely it is the Frankish version of Gain-, of uncertain meaning. The deuterotheme -waif also has no clear meaning. it does not, however, mean "woman" (the coincidental weib spelling is unique to modern German, and was /i/ in Middle and old High German and the cognate languages (curiously the word in Bavarian becomes Baib)). It is possible that -wefa ia a Latinization of -wifa, "woman", but the combination of Gallo-Roman Geno- and Frankish wifa (not otherwise recorded as a name element) into Genovefa would imply that name was newly fabricated in the vita for it's sense of allegory (in the same way that her aunt is named Lutetia; i.e. Paris).

This message was edited 7/29/2020, 4:52 PM

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Etymologically, the German word Weib "woman", cognate to English wife, is very difficult to treat and explain, because it lacks cognates outside the Germanic languages. It is probably related to the Old High German verb weibon "to move to and fro", that is preserved in the military rank (German) Feldwebel or (Swiss) Weibel "sarge, staff sergeant".When you can read German, here are some relevant sections from Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch:http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=DWB&lemid=GW12159
http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&hitlist=&patternlist=&lemid=GW12169#XGW12169The German verb weben "to weave" is not related and has Indogermanic connections to Classical Greek and Sanskrit, but shows some contamination from weibon.http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=DWB&lemid=GW10107
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QuoteIt is probably related to the Old High German verb weibon "to move to and fro", that is preserved in the military rank (German) Feldwebel or (Swiss) Weibel "sarge, staff sergeant".
Upon reading this, I would like to add that in Dutch, we have the cognate weifelen (spelled as weyfelen in older times) meaning "to hesitate". The meaning is technically figurative, as it refers to how a person goes back and forth ("to and fro") between conflicting feelings. The Dutch verb wuiven meaning "to wave" is also related.• weifelen:
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/weifelen (in English)
- http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/weifelen (in Dutch)• wuiven:
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wuiven (in English)
- http://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/wuiven (in Dutch)
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