Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Qupperneq 103

Matteo Tarsi: On the origin of Christian terminology 93
Therefore, the path to be reconstructed here is Icel. altari – OIc.
altari/altári < OSax. altāri < Lat. altāre.
ÍOb agrees on this etymology and so does, at least partially, NDeW,
who ascribes the loan to continental West Germanic. AeW and IeW
treat the word as a borrowing from Old English while Fischer (1909:56)
most erroneously considers it to be a loan from Middle Low German.
ábóti: The word (E. ‘abbot’) was most likely borrowed into Old West
Norse twice and from diff erent lend-
ing languages, as witnessed by the
two variants, ábóti and abbati/abbáti,
the former occurring from the begin-
ning of the 13th century, and the latt er
from the second half of the 12th cen-
tury. Their diff erence in respect to the
borrowing language is easily appre-
ciable by a comparison between their
phonemic shapes. In Figures 2–3 the
word is used in the same sentence10:
the former comes from an Icelandic
manuscript which contains homiletic
texts, AM 237 a fol. (ca. 1150), while
the latt er is from the Norwegian Homily Book, AM 619 4to (ca. 1200).
As regards the etymology of the two variants, ábóti doubtless
comes from OE. abbot (< Lat. acc. sg. abbātem, nom. sg. abbās) (AeW,
IeW), while abbati/abbáti is considered to have been borrowed from
a continental West Germanic language (IeW), more precisely from
MLG. abbet (Fischer 1909:56)11. This, however, can hardly be true. First
of all, because of the early occurrence of the word and, more convinc-
ingly, due to phonemic reasons, as MLG. /e/ could hardly have been
adapted as OIc. /a/ when a more similar phoneme was at hand, i.e.
OIc. /e/.
10 (AM 237 a fol., 1rb8–11, diplomatic transcription): þeír merkia forráþs menn. þa es|9
sett er ero til stiornar oc til ęfl íngar|10 cristennar. sva sem abbatar ýuer munc|11om. eþa
hꜵfþíngiar ýuer lýþ.
(AM 619 4to, 48r30–48v1, diplomatic transcription): þæir merkia forráðsmenn þa er
sett ir ero til stiornar ok til [48v] efl ingar cristennar sva sem abotar yfi r muncum eða
hofðingiar yfi r lyð.
11 ÍOb lists the two words, ábóti and abbati/abbáti, together and simply gives a com-
mon etymology for the two, i.e. from Lat. abbās (acc. abbātem) < AGr. ἀββᾶς < Aram.
‘abbā ‘father’.
Figure 2. abbatar in AM 237a fol., 1rb10
Figure 3. abotar in AM 619 4to, 48v1
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