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Help[Facts] Re: Reingard
in reply to a message by elbowin
You're right, I'm forgetting names like Hildegard, but that's 11th C., and even then this is a low German/Franconian form of the theme. If there is no -gert or -gerte, then these are more like Frankish names borrowed into German use and not high German formations. Prosaic use of the feminine word is difficult to assess outside of Gothic, as there is semantic cross contamination with masculine and feminine forms of the near homographic word for rod/goad.
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Ah, I see you are thinking of a cognate of the High German Word Gerte "crop (whip)" as a potential source of gard. At least in High German, this IS feminine.I think it is a cognate of English garden, High German Garten in the sense "protected place". The latter word is masculine in High German. I see this leaves something to argue about the names' gender.
This message was edited 9/16/2024, 12:46 AM
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No I think Gerte crop is a source of semantic contamination. In English this is yard, which is both a rod, a unit of measure (from the root of Gerte) and an enclosure. The enclosure is normally m., but Gothic has a feminine compound cognate with cynegierd (royalcourt). Yard also has a sense of area of enclosed land (f.), but since enclosed land is normally m. it is linked perhaps incorrectly to the root of Gerte as if it is area enclosed by so many rods.
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