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98 Orð og tunga
The Old Saxon word had in turn been borrowed from OFr. papes (see
the discussion in Halldór Halldórsson 1969b:116–117).
The loanword has therefore followed the following path: Icel./OIc.
páfi < OSax. pāƀos < OFr. papes < Lat. pāpa < AGr. πάπας, whose origi-
nal meaning was ‘father’ (cf. above).
5 Conclusions
The main aim of this article was to present and partially discuss the
origin of the core of the borrowed Christian lexicon still preserved in
Icelandic. The analysis of this part of the Icelandic lexicon has been
carried out in the context of the historical sett ing in which the words
are most likely to have been borrowed. By following a methodology
which strongly rests both on historical and on linguistic facts, as out-
lined by Halldór Halldórsson (1970), an att empt has been made to
bett er defi ne, or even in some cases amend, some etymologies pro-
posed by earlier scholars.
Moreover, it has been shown that the Old Saxon infl uence on the
early Icelandic Christian lexicon is, while smaller, not less important
than the bigger, and sometimes overestimated, Old English infl uence,
in particular as regards the earliest Christian vocabulary (10th–11th c.).
Its roots cannot be ascribed to a Middle Low German infl uence for ob-
vious, albeit oft en overlooked, chronological reasons (cf. footnote 4).
Finally, it should also always be borne in mind that in some cases
the century in which a loanword fi rst appears in the texts (cf. sec-
tion 3) might not coincide with that of the actual borrowing in the
language, as shown for e.g. djöfull and kristinn. Some words in fact,
due to their chief importance for the Christian doctrine, cannot have
been borrowed later than the 10th century. They constitute therefore
the primary vocabulary, without which – I posit – no later doctrinal
development could have been possible.
References
Adams, James Noel. 2013. Social Variation and the Latin Language. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
AeW = Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 1962. Ed. by Jan de Vries. Lei-
den: Brill.
Ari Þorgilsson. 1968. Íslendingabók. Landnámabók. Ed. by Jakob Benediktsson.
Íslenzk fornrit I. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
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