The history of the word king

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen,^[1] a title which is also given to the consort of a king, although in some cases, the title of King is given to females such as in the case of Mary, Queen of Hungary.

• In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the title may refer to tribal kingship. Germanic kingship is cognate with Indo-European traditions of tribal rulership (c.f. Indic rājan, Gothic reiks, and Old Irish rí, etc.).
• In the context of classical antiquity, king may translate in Latin as rex and in Greek as archon or basileus.
• In classical European feudalism, the title of king as the ruler of a kingdom is understood to be the highest rank in the feudal order, potentially subject, at least nominally, only to an emperor (harking back to the client kings of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire).^[2]
• In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies (either absolute or constitutional). The title of king is used alongside other titles for monarchs: in the West, emperor, grand prince, prince, archduke, duke or grand duke, and in the Islamic world, malik, sultan, emir or hakim, etc.^[3]
• The city-states of the Aztec Empire had a Tlatoani, which were kings of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The Huey Tlatoani was the emperor of the Aztecs.^[4]

The term king may also refer to a king consort, a title that is sometimes given to the husband of a ruling queen, but the title of prince consort is more common.

Etymology

The English term king is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyning, which in turn is derived from the Common Germanic *kuningaz. The Common Germanic term was borrowed into Estonian and Finnish at an early time, surviving in these languages as kuningas. It is a derivation from the term *kunjom «kin» (Old English cynn) by the -inga- suffix. The literal meaning is that of a «scion of the [noble] kin», or perhaps «son or descendant of one of noble birth» (OED).

The English term translates, and is considered equivalent to, Latin rēx and its equivalents in the various European languages. The Germanic term is notably different from the word for «King» in other Indo-European languages (*rēks «ruler»; Latin rēx, Sanskrit rājan and Irish ríg; however, see Gothic reiks and, e.g., modern German Reich and modern Dutch rijk).

History

The English word is of Germanic origin, and historically refers to Germanic kingship, in the pre-Christian period a type of tribal kingship. The monarchies of Europe in the Christian Middle Ages derived their claim from Christianisation and the divine right of kings, partly influenced by the notion of sacral kingship inherited from Germanic antiquity.

The Early Middle Ages begin with a fragmentation of the former Western Roman Empire into barbarian kingdoms. In Western Europe, the kingdom of the Franks developed into the Carolingian Empire by the 8th century, and the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England were unified into the kingdom of England by the 10th century.

With the breakup of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, the system of feudalism places kings at the head of a pyramid of relationships between liege lords and vassals, dependent on the regional rule of barons, and the intermediate positions of counts (or earls) and dukes. The core of European feudal manorialism in the High Middle Ages were the territories of the former Carolingian Empire, i.e. the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire (centered on the nominal kingdoms of Germany and Italy).^[5]

In the course of the European Middle Ages, the European kingdoms underwent a general trend of centralisation of power, so that by the Late Middle Ages there were a number of large and powerful kingdoms in Europe, which would develop into the great powers of Europe in the Early Modern period.

• In the Iberian Peninsula, the remnants of the Visigothic Kingdom, the petty kingdoms of Asturias and Pamplona, expanded into the kingdom of Portugal, the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon with the ongoing Reconquista.
• In southern Europe, the kingdom of Sicily was established following the Norman conquest of southern Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia was claimed as a separate title held by the Crown of Aragon in 1324. In the Balkans, the Kingdom of Serbia was established in 1217.
• In central Europe, the Kingdom of Hungary was established in AD 1000 following the Christianisation of the Magyars. The kingdoms of Poland and Bohemia were established within the Holy Roman Empire in 1025 and 1198, respectively.
• In eastern Europe, the Grand Duchy of Moscow did not technically claim the status of kingdom until the early modern Tsardom of Russia.
• In northern Europe, the tribal kingdoms of the Viking Age by the 11th century expanded into the North Sea Empire under Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England and Norway. The Christianization of Scandinavia resulted in «consolidated» kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and by the end of the medieval period the pan-Scandinavian Kalmar Union.

Contemporary kings

Currently (as of 2022), fifteen kings are recognized as the heads of state of sovereign states (i.e. English king is used as official translation of the respective native titles held by the monarchs).

Most of these are heads of state of constitutional monarchies; kings ruling over absolute monarchies are the King of Saudi Arabia, the King of Bahrain and the King of Eswatini.^[6]

Monarch	House	Title	Kingdom	Reign begin	Age	Monarchy est.
Harald V, King of Norway	Glücksburg	konge	Kingdom of Norway	January 17, 1991	86	11th c.
Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden	Bernadotte	konung	Kingdom of Sweden	September 15, 1973	76	12th c.
Felipe VI, King of Spain	Bourbon	rey	Kingdom of Spain	June 19, 2014	55	1978 / 1479
Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands	Orange-Nassau	koning	Kingdom of the Netherlands	April 30, 2013	55	1815
Philippe , King of the Belgians	Saxe-Coburg and Gotha	koning / roi / König	Kingdom of Belgium	July 21, 2013	62	1830
Salman, King of Saudi Arabia	Saud	ملك malik	Kingdom of Saudi Arabia	January 23, 2015	87	1932
Abdullah II, King of Jordan	Hashim	ملك malik	Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan	February 7, 1999	61	1946
Mohammed VI, King of Morocco	Alaoui	ملك malik	Kingdom of Morocco	July 23, 1999	59	1956
Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of Bahrain	Khalifa	ملك malik	Kingdom of Bahrain	February 14, 2002	73	1971
Vajiralongkorn, King of Thailand	Chakri	กษัตริย์ kasat	Kingdom of Thailand	October 13, 2016	70	1782
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, King of Bhutan	Wangchuck	འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་པོ་ druk gyalpo	Kingdom of Bhutan	December 9, 2006	43	1907
Norodom Sihamoni, King of Cambodia	Norodom	ស្ដេច sdac	Kingdom of Cambodia	October 14, 2004	69	1993 / 1953
Tupou VI, King of Tonga	Tupou	king / tu’i	Kingdom of Tonga	March 18, 2012	63	1970
Letsie III, King of Lesotho	Moshesh	king / morena	Kingdom of Lesotho	February 7, 1996	59	1966
Mswati III, King of Eswatini	Dlamini	ngwenyama	Kingdom of Eswatini	April 25, 1986	54	1968
Charles III, King of the United Kingdom	Windsor	King	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Commonwealth realms	September 8, 2022	74	927 / 843

See also

Notes

References

• Cannadine, David; Price, Simon, eds. (1987). Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33513-2. LCCN 86-29881.
• Craughwell, Thomas J. (2009). 5,000 Years of Royalty: Kings, Queens, Princes, Emperors & Tsars. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60376-189-5.
• Hani, Jean (2011). Sacred Royalty: From the Pharaoh to the Most Christian King. The Matheson Trust. ISBN 978-1-908092-05-2.

External links

• Media related to Kings at Wikimedia Commons

• Phillip, Walter Alison (1911). «King» . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). pp. 805–806.

The encyclopedia of the Russian language sparingly describes in a few lines the origin and meaning of the concept of «king». This unfortunate omission becomes all the more incomprehensible, because it is in Russian that this word is used very often. We will try to tell where this concept came from in our language.

The word «king» is a distorted pronunciation of the Latin concept caesar (Caesar, Caesar), which came to Russian through Byzantium. In ancient Rome, after the era of the brilliant reign of Julius Caesar, this was the name given to the person with all the power. The ancient Slavs did not have kings — all power belonged to the princes. It is interesting that the Western European early Middle Ages did not have kings, but in the Near and Middle East autocratic kings met at every turn. For example, it is enough to recall King Solomon from the Book of Judges, who had unlimited power in ancient Israel.

Medieval Russia

Who knows, if not for such a long bondage of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, maybe ancient Russia would have been delivered from tsarism as the highest form of autocracy. Butseveral hundred years of Mongol domination strengthened precisely the eastern form of government in ancient Muscovy. The tsars of Russia have all the features of oriental despotism and bring cruelty and ruthlessness to enemies into their own forms of government, demanding absolute obedience from those close to them.

Ivan the Terrible

The era of Russian tsars began at the end of the 16th century. The long period of unrest and Tatar rule was coming to an end. Russia grew stronger and united around the Moscow principality. The first Russian tsar is Ivan the Terrible, the offspring of the great Rurik dynasty, who ruled the Russian lands for many centuries. It is interesting that Ivan the Terrible began to call himself tsar far from immediately. The first years of his reign on all documents next to his name melted the title of the Grand Duke. But Byzantium, which was considered the elder sister of Russia, fell under the onslaught of the Turks. The title of absolute ruler was taken up by Ivan the Terrible. In decrees and letters, the word “autocrat” began to appear next to his name — this is how the title of emperor of Byzantium was translated. In addition, he managed to marry the niece of the real and Byzantine emperor Sophia Palaiologos. Having become the wife of Ivan the Terrible, she shared with him not only power in Russia, but also the ghostly inheritance rights to all the titles of the Eastern Roman Empire. In addition to the title «king of the state», she transferred the rights to the coat of arms. This is how the double-headed eagle appears on the seal of the autocrat and Tsar Ivan, which once proudly adorned the coats of arms and banners of the Byzantine emperors.

Kings of Russia

After the death of Ivan the Terrible was notno one who could, by right of succession to the throne, take the place of the Muscovite tsar. Numerous False Dmitrys and other applicants were eventually mercilessly expelled from the royal chambers. On March 13, 1613, at the Zemsky Sobor, it was decided to elect Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov as tsar and place him on the throne of Moscow. Thus began the three-hundred-year reign of the Romanov tsars, one of the most famous monarchical dynasties in the world.

Kings and kings

Interestingly, when translated from Russian, the word «tsar» loses its autocratic meaning. Quite often in European languages it is replaced by the term «king», which is not quite the same thing. The attitude towards the king and the king was different. In Russia, the tsar is the viceroy of God on earth, a protector and intercessor, his anger was considered akin to a father’s, it was not for nothing that the phrase “tsar-father” came to us from antiquity.

The concept of «king» is the supreme ruler of a particular land. If for a Russian the word «tsar» is a synonym for the ruler of his own country, then in the thinking of a European the association will be more biblical. Such a discrepancy in the interpretation of the same word has led to the fact that in some languages an interesting transcription of this mysterious word has appeared. King is [tsar], [tzar] and other similar terms copied letter by letter. Sometimes it is replaced by the term king.

Probably, you might think that in our time, when the reign of kings is no longer relevant, and the concept as such is almost gone. This is not entirely true. If we ignore the state incarnation of this term, then this conceptoften found in Russian, only in a figurative sense. Today, the king is something majestic, rich, powerful, and sometimes simply huge. We all know about the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell.

Praising a dinner or a dress, we characterize them with the word «royal». Perhaps this word will surprise us more than once in the very near future.

English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

• kyng, kynge (archaic)
• kinge (obsolete)

Pronunciation[edit]

• enPR: kĭng, IPA^(key): /kɪŋ/
• (US, pre-/ŋ/ tensing), IPA^(key): /kiŋ/
• Rhymes: -ɪŋ

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English king, kyng, from Old English cyng, cyning (“king”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuning, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz, *kunungaz (“king”), equivalent to kin +‎ -ing. Doublet of cyning.

Cognate with Scots keeng (“king”), North Frisian köning (“king”), West Frisian kening (“king”), Dutch koning (“king”), Low German Koning, Köning (“king”), German König (“king”), Danish konge (“king”), Norwegian konge, Swedish konung, kung (“king”), Icelandic konungur, kóngur (“king”), Polish ksiądz (“priest”), Russian князь (knjazʹ, “prince”), Old Church Slavonic кънѧѕь (kŭnędzĭ), Romanian chinez, Finnish kuningas (“king”), Estonian kuningas, Ingrian kunigas, Karelian kuninkas, Livvi kuńingas, Ludian kuńingas, Veps kuningaz, Võro kuning and Votic kunikaz. Eclipsed non-native Middle English roy (“king”) (Early Modern English roy), borrowed from Old French roi, rei, rai (“king”).

Noun[edit]

king (plural kings)

1. A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy. If it is an absolute monarchy, then he is the supreme ruler of his nation.

   Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 to 1547.

2. A powerful or majorly influential person.

   Howard Stern styled himself as the «king of all media».

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     «I wish we were back in Tenth Street. But so many children came […] and the Tenth Street house wasn’t half big enough; and a dreadful speculative builder built this house and persuaded Austin to buy it. Oh, dear, and here we are among the rich and great; and the steel kings and copper kings and oil kings and their heirs and dauphins. […]«

   • 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:

     The truth is that [Isaac] Newton was very much a product of his time. The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts. Instead “he was the last of the magicians”.

3. (countable or uncountable) Something that has a preeminent position.

   In times of financial panic, cash is king.
4. A component of certain games.
   1. (chess) The principal chess piece, that players seek to threaten with unavoidable capture to result in a victory by checkmate. It is often the tallest piece, with a symbolic crown with a cross at the top.
   2. (card games) A playing card with the letter «K» and the image of a king on it, the thirteenth card in a given suit.
   3. A checker (a piece of checkers/draughts) that reached the farthest row forward, thus becoming crowned (either by turning it upside-down, or by stacking another checker on it) and gaining more freedom of movement.
   4. The central pin or skittle in bowling games.
      • 1878, John Henry Walsh, British Rural Sports (page 712)

        In knockemdowns and bowls ten pins are used, the centre one being called the king, and the ball has to be grounded before it reaches the frame.

5. (UK, slang) A king skin.

   Oi mate, have you got kings?

6. A male dragonfly; a drake.
7. A king-sized bed.
   • 2002, Scott W. Donkin, Gerard Meyer, Peak Performance: Body and Mind (page 119)

     Try asking for a king-size bed next time because kings are usually firmer.

8. The monarch with the most power and authority in a monarchy, regardless of sex.

   • 1891 January 3, ““King” Wilhelmina”, in The Chicago Daily Tribune, volume LI, number III, Chicago, Ill., page 5, column 7:

     The British Parliament has had made it for it in the past the claim that it could do anything excepting convert a woman into a man. […] And the high court [of Amsterdam] has done it by deciding that all officials and public servants shall take their oath of allegiance not to Queen Wilhelmina but to King Wilhelmina.

   • 2009, Charlotte Booth, “Hatshepsut”, in The Curse of the Mummy and Other Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, Oneworld Publications, →ISBN, page 93:

     Hatshepsut was ruling as a king, not queen and she needed to be recognised as such.

   • 2011, Nwando Achebe, “Mgbapu Ahebi: Exile in Igalaland, ca. 1895–1916”, in The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe, Bloomington, Ind.; Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, pages 63–64:

     The act of perforating one’s ears could be read as a gendering performance—a modification from an overt masculinity (king) to a tempered female masculinity (king with female traits)—in which the male king was expected to adopt the quintessence of Omeppa’s female king wife, Ebulejonu, and by so doing, embody the true essence of womanhood. […] Attah-Ebulejonu, like Hatshepsut of Egypt before her, ruled as (and was remembered as) a king, not queen, perhaps setting the precedent for the coronation of another female king, Ahebi Ugbabe, about four centuries later. […] This time, the female king would not rule in the Igala kingdom nor would she be of Igala origin. Instead, the king would be an Igbo woman who had lived in Igalaland for many years, who had come of age and matured there and in the process had imbibed the cultural values and mores of the people with whom she had lived in exile.

9. (graph theory) A vertex in a directed graph which can reach every other vertex via a path with a length of at most 2.

Synonyms[edit]

• Rex (the reigning king, formal), roy (obsolete, formal)

Coordinate terms[edit]

• (monarch): caesar, emperor, empress, kaiser, maharajah, prince, princess, queen, regent, royalty, shah, tsar, viceroy
• (playing card): ace, jack, joker, queen

Derived terms[edit]

Descendants[edit]

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

• ♔, ♚

Chess pieces in English · chess pieces, chessmen (see also: chess) (layout · text)
king	queen	rook, castle	bishop	knight	pawn

Playing cards in English · playing cards (layout · text)
ace	deuce, two	three	four	five	six	seven
eight	nine	ten	jack, knave	queen	king	joker

Suits in English · suits (see also: cards, playing cards) (layout · text)
hearts	diamonds	spades	clubs

Verb[edit]

king (third-person singular simple present kings, present participle kinging, simple past and past participle kinged)

1. To crown king, to make (a person) king.
   • 1982, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Review, Volume 47, page 16,

     The kinging of Macbeth is the business of the first part of the play […] .

   • 2008, William Shakespeare, A. R. Braunmuller (editor), Macbeth, Introduction, page 24,

     One narrative is the kinging and unkinging of Macbeth; the other narrative is the attack on Banquo’s line and that line’s eventual accession and supposed Jacobean survival through Malcolm’s successful counter-attack on Macbeth.

2. To rule over as king.

   • 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv]:

     And let us do it with no show of fear; / No, with no more than if we heard that England / Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance; / For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d, / Her sceptre so fantastically borne / By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, / That fear attends her not.

3. To perform the duties of a king.
   • 1918, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, The Railroad Trainman, Volume 35, page 675,

     He had to do all his kinging after supper, which left him no time for roystering with the nobility and certain others.

   • 2001, Chip R. Bell, Managers as Mentors: Building Partnerships for Learning, page 6,

     Second, Mentor (the old man) combined the wisdom of experience with the sensitivity of a fawn in his attempts to convey kinging skills to young Telemachus.

4. To assume or pretend preeminence (over); to lord it over.
   • 1917, Edna Ferber, Fanny Herself, page 32,

     The seating arrangement of the temple was the Almanach de Gotha of Congregation Emanu-el. Old Ben Reitman, patriarch among the Jewish settlers of Winnebago, who had come over an immigrant youth, and who now owned hundreds of rich farm acres, besides houses, mills and banks, kinged it from the front seat of the center section.

5. To promote a piece of draughts/checkers that has traversed the board to the opposite side, that piece subsequently being permitted to move backwards as well as forwards.
   • 1957, Bertram Vivian Bowden (editor), Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines, page 302,

     If the machine does this, it will lose only one point, and as it is not looking far enough ahead, it cannot see that it has not prevented its opponent from kinging but only postponed the evil day.

   • 1986, Rick DeMarinis, The Burning Women of Far Cry, page 100,

     I was about to make a move that would corner a piece that she was trying to get kinged, but I slid my checker back […] .

6. To dress and perform as a drag king.
   • 2008, Audrey Yue, King Victoria: Asian Drag Kings, Postcolonial Female Masculinity, and Hybrid Sexuality in Australia, in Fran Martin, Peter Jackson, Audrey Yue, Mark McLelland (editors), AsiaPacifQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, page 266,

     Through the ex-centric diaspora, kinging in postcolonial Australia has become a site of critical hybridity where diasporic female masculinities have emerged through the contestations of «home» and «host» cultures.

Translations[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

Noun[edit]

king (plural kings)

1. Alternative form of qing (Chinese musical instrument)

Anagrams[edit]

• gink

Estonian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Proto-Finnic *kenkä. Cognate with Finnish kenkä.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /ˈkinɡ̊/, [ˈkiŋɡ̊]

Noun[edit]

king (genitive kinga, partitive kinga)

1. shoe

Declension[edit]

Quotations[edit]

Kapampangan[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

• keng
• qng, queng, quing (Spanish variant)

Preposition[edit]

king

1. indirect object marker; of, to, at, on, in, into, onto, among, around, for

Manx[edit]

Noun[edit]

king m

1. inflection of kione:
   1. genitive singular
   2. nominative plural

Mutation[edit]

Manx mutation
Radical	Lenition	Eclipsis
king	ching	ging
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Middle English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

• kenin, kening, kinig (in compounds, toponymic)
• gug, kug (in compounds, influenced by Old Norse (see etymology))
• knyng (transmission error)
• chinge, chinȝ, cing, cining, cinȝ, ging, keing, keng, kingk, kingue, kining, kink, kyng, kynge

Etymology[edit]

Inherited from the Old English cyning, from Proto-West Germanic *kuning, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz. The forms kug (attested in the compounds kugdom, kuglond, and kugriche) and gug (attested in the compound guglond) show the influence of the Old Norse konungr, whence they borrow their root vowel. The early forms featuring syncope (chinge, chinȝ, cing, and cinȝ) may have long ī.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /kinɡ/, [kiŋɡ]

Noun[edit]

king (nominative plural kinges, also the early forms kingas or kingæs)

1. king (monarch)
2. king (chess piece)

Derived terms[edit]

Descendants[edit]

• English: king (see there for further descendants)
• Scots: keeng, king
• Yola: kinge, king

References[edit]

• “king, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Swedish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English king.

Adjective[edit]

king

1. (slang) great, awesome

   Deras sound är king asså

   Their sound is so awesome

   Helgen var king

   The weekend was awesome

   – Jag lyckades fixa datorn. – King!

   – I managed to fix the computer. – Awesome!

   Synonym: kunglig

Usage notes[edit]

Uninflected.

References[edit]

• Slangopedia

Tok Pisin[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From English king.

Noun[edit]

king

1. king

Yola[edit]

Noun[edit]

king

1. Alternative form of kinge

   • 1867, “THE WEDDEEN O BALLYMORE”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 5:

     Earch myde was a queen, an earch bye was a king;

     Each maid was a queen, and each boy was a king;

References[edit]

• Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 96

Since the norman conquest, English has changed drastically from a purely germanic language to one where nearly 40% of its vocabulary is from Norman French. Of these, words of power make up the majority- absolute, dominion, ducal/duchy, etc. But there seems to be a pretty major exception: King, which is wholly germanic. when you look up the etymology, this is what you get:

Old English cyning**,** cyng**, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch** koning and German König**, also to kin.**

However, the monarchs (up until Henry VIII!) used things like Rex Anglium, Latin. Their French counterparts saw the evolution from Rex Francorum to Roi des Francais. A similar story in Spanish with Rey.

So, how come, despite the Latin/romance-speaking rulers, who certainly passed down more than a few other words relating to governance and weapons, this german word that they didn’t seem to use survived?