Could someone tell me if the Latin ’lex’ was a cognate of the
words 'lag, law, lög' etc. in the Germanic languages? Or is it a loan-
word? When we decline ‘lex’ we get the word-stem ‘leg-‘. Although I
am quite familiar with Latin, I’ve not been aware of this similarity until
now.

I know that the English ‘law’ is a loan-word from the Old Norse. I was
trying to figure out what could be the German cognate of this word, but
it seems to me there isn’t such a one. Law is either ‘Recht’ or ‘Gesetz’
in German (the latter has the Old English cognate ‘gesetnys’).
Is ‘lag’, ‘lög’ a Nordic word or does it have a Proto-Germanic origin?

Imre Kovacs