UN SISTEM JURIDIC-ADMINISTRATIV DE ORIGINE VECHE GERMANICĂ REFLECTAT ÎNTR-O FAMILIE LEXICALĂ ROMÂNEASCĂ (BAN, BĂNAT, BĂNI, BĂNUI, BÂNTUI)
A juridic-administrative system of Old German origin reflected by a Romanian lexical family (ban, bănat, băni, bănui, bântui)

Summary/Abstract: One can rarely find a series of cognates as significant – for both the post-ancient history of Southeast-Central Europe and for the Old Germanic domain – as the Romanian lexical family that includes ban ‘feudal title of nobility’ and ban ‘coin, money’. It is rather surprising that no one has decisively propounded Old Germanic origins for those Romanian words as well as for their obvious relatives in neighbouring languages. Such a situation is most probably due to the fact that some earlier (Avar-Turkic-Hungarian) etymological explanations regarding the ban family came to be considered as definitive solutions, so they became a kind of “etymological axioms” transmitted from author to author up until the present day. The main point of this study is to demonstrate that the Romanian lexical family represented by terms such as ban, bănat, băni, bănui and bântui (plus many significant derivatives) are far from being just borrowings from the languages of today’s neighbours of the Romanians. In their earliest recorded meanings, the Romanian words under discussion show surprising unity, since they all reflect a proto-feudal juridical-administrative system that can be clarified only by reference to the original semantic sphere of Germanic words such as German Bann, Swedish bann or English ban. The general conclusion of this study (divided into two parts, to be published in two consecutive issues of Arheologia Moldovei) is that Romanian, as continuant of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Southeast Europe, preserved a lexical family based on Old Germanic loans with meanings that look even more archaic than the ones of the ban family (of Frankish origin) which survived in the French language.

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