Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Page 105

Matteo Tarsi: On the origin of Christian terminology 95
words, whereas more diffi cult would be to explain the adaptation of
OE. /ʃ/ as OIc. /sk/.
The variant byskup is derived from biskup where the original /i/ has
been subject to u-umlaut due to the peculiar phonetic context which
surrounded the original /i/, i.e. immediately preceded by a bilabial
consonant and followed by a back vowel in the next syllable (Noreen
1923:71).
djöfull: Even though the word (E. ‘devil’) has a fundamental
importance in Christian doctrine, its fi rst occurrence is relatively
late, namely in Halldórr svaldri’s Útfarardrápa, a poem from the fi rst
quarter of the 12th century (Skjald, A–I:486–488)14. The word, on whose
etymology AeW, IeW and ÍOb agree, is undoubtedly a borrowing via
Old Saxon: Icel. djöfull – OIc. djǫfull < OSax. diuƀal < Lat. diabolus <
AGr. διάβολος ‘slanderous, backbiting’.
erki-: The prefi x (E. ‘arch-’) usually occurs in compounds with the
words biskup ‘bishop’, djákni ‘deacon’, engill ‘angel’, prestur ‘priest’
and stóll ‘see’. The compound appearing the earliest in Old Icelandic
sources is erkistóll (E. ‘archbishopric’), the fi rst occurrence of which is
in Markús Skeggjason’s Eiríksdrápa, a poem from the fi rst decade of the
12th century (Skjald, A–I:444–452)15. AeW and ÍOb consider the prefi x
to have been borrowed from OE. ærce- (< Lat. archi- < AGr. ἀρχι-),
while IeW considers it to have been borrowed directly from Latin.
Here, again, Old Saxon might be a more suitable intermediary
than Old English for similar reasons as those listed for biskup, given
that a direct loan from Latin is a hypothesis that one would discard
because Lat. /a/ > OIc. /a/, not /e/, and a palatal umlaut of /a/ > /e/ could
hardly have taken place here.
The etymology proposed here is therefore as follows: Icel./OIc.
erki- < OSax. *erke- (cf. MLG. erce-) < Lat. archi- < AGr. ἀρχι-.
kristinn: In the Icelandic sources this word occurs relatively late,
given its major importance for the religious Christian lexicon. Its fi rst
occurrence is, in fact, recorded in a 12th-century lausavísa by the skald
Einarr Skúlason (Skjald, A–I:483), preserved in GKS 1009 fol. (cf. SkP
II, 2:572–573). AeW and ÍOb consider the word to be a borrowing from
OE. cristen. While mentioning that it is a religious loanword from
Lat. christiānus < AGr. χριστιανός, IeW names two possible lending
14 For a complete list of the mss. in which the poem is preserved see SkP II, 2:489.
15 For a complete list of the mss. in which the poem is preserved see SkP II, 1:442.
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