Gordon
When you ask a question on this web site
you open a whole new can of worms. Here's my little
wriggler.
'Konungr' as a word is beginning to
intrigue me. It obviously corresponds to Old English 'cyning'.
Now, if we were able to dig deeply into
linguistic history, would we find ultimately that there are two elements.
'kona' - 'woman', and 'ungr' - 'young', the whole word to mean the young (son)
of a woman? We would have to suppose that at some time 'kona' was a word or
title of distinction as well as having its ordinary meaning. There is an analogy
to be made here with Old English 'cwene' which could mean 'prostitute',
' young woman' and 'queen'' so we do have a precedent.
Also if the second element was 'ungr',
meaning 'young', then our English suffix 'ing' would be identical or closely
related to it.
Any Germanic or Proto-Indo-European
scholars out there who could enlighten us?
Cheers
Jed