Meaning of Basque

Once again I will point you towards the web page Reference.com, this time to provide with some background on the origin of the word Basque.

Here you have it:

Etymology of the word Basque

The English word Basque comes from French Basque (pronounced ), which itself comes from Gascon Basco (pronounced ) and Spanish Vasco (pronounced ). These, in turn, come from Latin Vasco (pronounced ), plural Vascones (see History section below). The Latin labial-velar approximant /w/ typically evolved into the voiced bilabial plosive /b/ in Gascon and Spanish, probably under the influence of Basque and Aquitanian (a language related to old Basque and spoken in Gascony in Antiquity). This explains the Roman pun at the expense of the Aquitanians (ancestor of the Gascons): "Beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est", which translates as "Blessed Iberians, Romans considered the Aquitanians akin to the Iberians, for whom living (vivere) is drinking (bibere)".

One frequent theory about the origin of Latin Vasco is that it derives from Latin boscus or buscus meaning "wooded area" (cf. Spanish bosque, forest). Thus Vascones would mean "those living in the wooded land". However, this fake etymology is now proven wrong, as Latin boscus/buscus only appeared in the Middle Ages, and is probably a corruption of classical Latin arbustus (meaning "planted with tree", from arbor, "tree"), possibly under the influence of Germanic busk or bosk (cf. English bush, German Busch), whose origin is itself unknown.

Another side of that theory sees Latin Vasco still meaning "of the wooded land", but this time coming from (modern) Basque basoko where baso- means forest, and -ko is the ending denoting possession/genitive. Besides the fact that basoko is a modern Basque word (it may have been quite a different word 2000 years ago), this etymology once popular among Basque people is now totally discredited by researchers.

To add to the mystery, several coins from the 1st and 2nd centuries BC were found in the north of Spain, bearing the inscription barscunes written in the Iberian alphabet. The place were they were minted is not certain but has been identified as Pamplona or Rocafort, the area where historians think the Vascones lived.

Today, it is thought that Latin Vasco comes from a Basque and Aquitanian root used by these people to call themselves. This root is eusk-, pronounced , which is indeed close from Latin . There was also an Aquitanian people whose name the Romans recorded as Ausci (pronounced in Latin), and which also seems to come from the same root.

In modern Basque, Basques call themselves euskaldunak, singular euskaldun, formed from euskal- (i.e. "Basque (language)") and -dun (i.e. "one who has"), so euskaldun literally means a Basque speaker. It should be noted that not all Basques are Basque speakers (euskaldunak), and not all Basque speakers are Basque (foreigners who learnt Basque are also euskaldunak). To remedy this inconvenience, a neologism was coined in the 19th century, the word euskotar, plural euskotarak, which means an ethnically Basque person, whether speaking Basque or not.

These Basque words all originate from the name the Basques use to call their language: euskara. Modern researchers have reconstructed the pronunciation and vocabulary of ancient Basque, and Alfonso Irigoyen proposes that the word euskara comes from the verb "to say" in ancient Basque, which was pronounced enautsi (modern Basque esan), and from the suffix -(k)ara ("way (of doing something)"). Thus euskara would literally mean "way of saying", "way of speaking". A proof of this is found in the Spanish book Compendio Historial written in 1571 by Basque writer Esteban de Garibay, who recorded the native name of the Basque language as "enusquera". However, as with most things related to Basque history, this hypothesis is not totally certain.

In the 19th century, Basque nationalist activist Sabino Arana thought that there was an original root euzko from eguzkiko ("of the sun" presuming a solar religion). From it he created the neologism Euzkadi for his purported independent Basque Country. This theory is totally discredited today, the only serious etymology being from enautsi and -(k)ara, but the neologism Euzkadi, in the regularized spelling Euskadi, is still widely used in Basque and Spanish.

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