On some possible Jewish and Slavonic sources of the Polish word bachor Cover Image

Kilka uwag o kwestii żydowskich i słowiańskich źródeł polskiego bachor
On some possible Jewish and Slavonic sources of the Polish word bachor

Author(s): Marek Stachowski
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA Sp. z o.o.

Summary/Abstract: A discussion of the etymology of Polish bachor ‘1. brat, bastard; 2. Jewish child’, usually derived from Hebrew, and arguments against a study by R. Rosół (2009) are offered in this article. Two most important suggestions made by the present author are as follows: (a) Hebrew words were borrowed into Polish via Latin or Yiddish, so there is no possibility to bring Polish bachor back to Hebrew bāhūr ‘young man’, without an intermediary stage; (b) It is the Yiddish name Bechor that could have come via Byelorussian béchur ‘young Jewish man’ ~ *báchur id. (cf. the appellative usage of the German name Fritz and that of the Russian name Ivan) as a source of the Polish substantive. Nevertheless, some important questions still remain unanswered, e.g. the problem of the interrelation between all these words on the one hand, and Serbian, Czech and Slovak bachor ‘stomach, rumen’ ~ Byelorussian béchur ~ bachúr ~ báchor ~ bachór ‘1. ‘child’; 2. ‘chubby child’; 3. ‘young Jewish man’ on the other.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 185-192
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: Polish