--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Dirk Howat" <dirk_howat@...>
wrote:

> According to Vigfusson et al:
>
> Gothic bua - to dwell
> buargs - dwellings, i.e. "city"
> I remember that citizen is somehow related to bua

Dirk,

The Go. verb cognate with OIc. búa, is bauan 'dwell', from which
comes the Go. noun bauains 'dwelling'.

Go. baurgs, OIc. borg, etc. are usually related rather to the strong
verb Go. bairgan, OIc. bjarga, etc. 'shelter, save, protect, etc.',
and the weak byrgja 'enclose'. This is the explanation given in
Cleasby & Vigfusson (uncorrected entry):

BORG, ar, f., pl. ir, [Ûlf. baurgs = iru\is, and once Nehem. vii. 2
= arx, castellum; A. S. burg, bnrb, byrig, = urbs and arx; Engl.
borough and burg; O. H. G. puruc, pure; late Lat. burgus; Ital.
borgo; Fr. borg; cp. Gr. irvpyos; the radical sense appears in
byrgja, to enclose; cp. also berg, a hill, and bjarga, to s a ve,
defend.

http://penguin.pearson.swarthmore.edu/~scrist1/scanned_books/html/oi_
cleasbyvigfusson/b0073.html

So also Bosworth & Toller, for OE burh:

http://penguin.pearson.swarthmore.edu/~scrist1/scanned_books/html/oe_
bosworthtoller/b0134.html


The Oxford English Dictionary tells a similar tale, borough:

Common Teut.: OE. bur, burh = OFris. burch, OS. burg (MDu. burch,
borch, Du. burg), OHG. burug (MHG. burc(g-), mod.G. burg), ON. (Sw.,
Da.) borg, Goth. baurgs:OTeut. *burg-s str. fem. App. f. same root
as OTeut. *berg-an str. vb. `to shelter'

On the other hand, Fick-Falk-Torp lists berg(an), burg and
berg 'hill' separately. And berg 'rock, hill, cliff' is also
considered a different root by the OED.

In any case, the German bürger 'citizen' (cf. Fr. bourgeois) comes
from burg. That's not to say there isn't a word for citizen in some
language related to búa, but I can't think of one.

> Gothic gabundi = bond
>
> Evolution:
> gabundi = bond
> bondi

Don't forget that's a long [o:] in bóndi, or that the uncontracted
búandi is actually well attested! The lack of palatal mutation in
the singular suggests that -i here is from earlier -a, rather than -
i, while the presence of mutation in the plural is also in keeping
with this being an old participle nd-stem. Go. gabundi, by
contrast, is a feminine jo-stem (recorded as dat. sg. gabundjai, Eph
4,3), thus the regular sound changes would have produced nom. sg.
*byndr, if this word had descended into Old Icelandic (which it
appears not to have done).

In OIc., jo-stems as far as I know keep the regular umlaut
mutation. It's true this this disappears due to analogy in some
other classes of noun, cf. staðr, nauðr, etc. -- but even if the
umlaut was lacking in *byndr, it would appear then as bundr, rather
than bóndi/búandi.

Llama Nom