# Can "ama" be a noun in Latin?



## peter0095

Hello.

Can "ama" mean a noun, "the one who loves" in Latin?

context: name Amadeus

Thank you.


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## Sobakus

No, there's no such noun in Latin, and the name _Amadeus_ is a bad adaptation of Italian etc. _Amadeo_ which is an adaptation of German _Gottlieb._ _Amadeus_ is ungrammatical in Latin (there is no such pattern of making compounds), and its stress on the <e> would also be completely ungrammatical if the last part was Latin _deus_ with a short /e/. So it should be treated as an Italian loanword in Latin, not further analysable as a compound.


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## peter0095

In Italian _Amadeus_ is _Amedeus_, according to what Italian native speakers said.


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## fdb

Amadeus is a verb+noun compound (type: φερέοικος). The case ending of the second component is determined by the syntax of the sentence, not by the structure of the word. The first component is an imperative, so Amadeus means “love God!” It is thus not synonymous with Theophilos, “friend of God”, a genitival tatpuruṣa. The German Gottlieb is the exact equivalent of Theophilos, but not of Amadeus, for which the German equivalent would be Liebgott. Compound names with an imperative as their first component were once fairly popular in German, especially in the milieu of pietism; I am thinking of names like Lebrecht. There was at that time in fact an Austrian diplomat called Johann Amadeus von Thugut, a name containing both a Latin (ama-deus) and a German (tu-gut) compound of this type.


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## Sobakus

fdb said:


> Amadeus is a verb+noun compound (type: φερέοικος). The case ending of the second component is determined by the syntax of the sentence, not by the structure of the word. The first component is an imperative, so Amadeus means “love God!” It is thus not synonymous with Theophilos, “friend of God”, a genitival tatpuruṣa. The German Gottlieb is the exact equivalent of Theophilos, but not of Amadeus, for which the German equivalent would be Liebgott. Compound names with an imperative as their first component were once fairly popular in German, especially in the milieu of pietism; I am thinking of names like Lebrecht. There was at that time in fact an Austrian diplomat called Johann Amadeus von Thugut, a name containing both a Latin (ama-deus) and a German (tu-gut) compound of this type.


Romance verb+noun compounds don't have any imperative semantics, but refer to persons or instruments able to perform the action expressed by the transitive verb. Latin has no such compounds, or verb+noun compounds in general – only noun+verb ones, like _corni-cen, aqui-ductus, vēli-volus_. German does have compounds that are both verbally and nominally headed, but they cannot be mapped onto Latin nor Romance compounds – Latin because it has no verb+noun compounds, and Romance because these compounds have different semantics.

The Romance type mirror their basic syntactic structure, which is Verb Object, and might not be properly compounds, but nominalised predicates frozen at a stage before a personal ending has been added to the verb. The Latin compounds also mirror Latin's basic syntactic structure, which is Object Verb. Attempting to form a verb+noun compound in Latin gives the same result as in English, i.e. _love-god_ which means “god of love”.


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## Sobakus

peter0095 said:


> In Italian _Amadeus_ is _Amedeus_, according to what Italian native speakers said.


You shouldn't trust anything those native speakers tell you.


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## symposium

But everywhere on the internet they say that Italian "Amedeo" (the actual Italian version of the name) comes from late Latin name "Amadeus", not the other way round...


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## Sobakus

symposium said:


> But everywhere on the internet they say that Italian "Amedeo" (the actual Italian version of the name) comes from late Latin name "Amadeus", not the other way round...


This is easy to disprove – just check when late Latin was spoken, and roughly when the name appears, which seems to coincide with the life of Mozart. You'll find that there's a millenium separating the two events. Mozart's middle name, as used by himself, was _Amadé_ in French, _Amadeo_ or _Amadi_ in Italian. He was christened as _Theophilus. _The Latin form was probably invented by himself as a way of toying with his own name. See also the wikipedia article.


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## symposium

Well, the name "Amedeo" is attested long before Mozart: for exemple, Duke Amedeo I di Savoia in the eleventh century. Wikipedia (yeah) shows examples where his name in Latin is "Amedeus", not "Amadeus". Then there is Saint Amadeus from France, whose name is Latin is "Amedeus", too, so "Amedeus" seems to precede "Amadeus/Amadeo", although all these forms were probably used at the same time... But it looks like "Amedeus" is the correct and more anciently attested Latin spelling. I don't know if that is just a latinization of an Italian name, a name that was currently used in Italy back then, or if it has a different origin, maybe a French one. One must remember that at that time Savoy was much more French than Italian, that is, Provençal, and Saint Amedeus was from Lyon and Lyon spoke Provençal, too, back then, so perhaps the origin of the name is to be found in Provençal.


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## Sobakus

symposium said:


> Well, the name "Amedeo" is attested long before Mozart: for exemple, Duke Amedeo I di Savoia in the eleventh century. Wikipedia (yeah) shows examples where his name in Latin is "Amedeus", not "Amadeus". Then there is Saint Amadeus from France, whose name is Latin is "Amedeus", too, so "Amedeus" seems to precede "Amadeus/Amadeo", although all these forms were probably used at the same time... But it looks like "Amedeus" is the correct and more anciently attested Latin spelling. I don't know if that is just a latinization of an Italian name, a name that was currently used in Italy back then, or if it has a different origin, maybe a French one. One must remember that at that time Savoy was much more French than Italian, that is, Provençal, and Saint Amedeus was from Lyon and Lyon spoke Provençal, too, back then, so perhaps the origin of the name is to be found in Provençal.


I had found the Savoyard Amedeuses on the Italian wikipedia page after writing that message, but was hoping to find some studies on the name's origin and history before commenting further. Unfortunately, I found none, but I can offer some of my own thoughts and conclusions.

I hadn't noticed the vowel difference in Latin _Amedeus,_ and didn't think it was important in Italian _Amedeo,_ but both forms are explained by the northern (Old) French form of his name, _Amédée._ This form is clearly an adaptation to written northern French of some name either in Latin or in the local language.

The local language in Lyon wasn't (and isn't) Occitan-Provençal at all, but what's called by the misleading name *Franco-Provençal, *more recently with the invented name *Arpitan,* and traditionally *Roman(d)* and just *patois.* It's not a language, but a very diverse dialect area with affinities to Òc, Oïl, Piedmontese and Romansch varieties. It doesn't have any degree of standardisation, and no written tradition to speak of. During the medieval times, when it wasn't translated into Latin, it was represented in writing in a conventionalised chancery language that was mainly based on northern French, but with many local features, which can be called _para-Francoprovençal_ or just _scripta._​
If the name _Amédée_ – if that's really the form it surfaces in the written documents – is a chancery adaptation of some local name, then what would that name look like? Here an important fact is that the French Wikipedia gives his name as _*Amé* ou Amédée_. The former name surfaces much earlier than this in precisely the same area, and corresponds to Lat. _Amātus_ “beloved”.

Now, the obvious suggestion from this is that _Amédée_ is a fanciful alteration of the original name _*Amé,*_ which was widespread precisely in the area of Medieterranean Alps. The prototype for this alteration also appears to be clear – equivalents of Greek _Θεόφιλος_ are already attested in several Gothic names, as well as Old English _Gōdwine. _Latin and early Romance languages, however, simply didn't have a way build a formally equivalent dithematic compound name. So it's quite possible that Lat. _Amātus_ and OFr. _Amé _were the felt to be equivalent to Grk. _Θεόφιλος, _even though what they were actually equivalent to was Biblical Hebrew _Dāwīd._
​But the main impetus for all these translation attempts seems to be some Germanic name rather than Greek. The Francoprovençal area is located precisely on the Romance-Germanic linguistic boundary, with Alpine German varieties splitting Francoprovençal from Romansch, a split which occurred precisely in the early Middle Ages. But German _Gottlieb_ can't be that impetus, because actually it's this name that seems to originate in the 17-18th century and so was probably (re-)modelled after Greek, Latin or Romance, not the other way around. This page lists some more similar names.
​A very similar attempt to Latinise a Germanic name and to match the Greek meaning is _Deocarus_. The Germanic connection is also seen in the Latino-Germanic dithematic name _Amadildis__._​
So, to return to the FrPr name: if _Amédée_ is a conscious alteration of _Amé,_ then the latter would look like _*Amâ*_ in the local variety, probably still with the final _-t_ preserved back in the 10th century. The second element, _-dée,_ doesn't correspond to the word for “God” either in the local varieties – where it's approximately _Djiou(sse)_ in French orthography – or in northern French, but the final _-e_ is interesting. Gallo-Romance had a two-case nominative-oblique distinction, and FrPr not only did but at least one dialect still maintains it in the masc. sg. In that system, the oblique case was used as a genitive modifier, so an OFr. phrase like _la niece le duc_ was equivalent to Lat. _neptis ducis,_ and _la feste Dieu_ to _fēsta Deī._ Along the same lines, _*amé Dée*_ would theoretically correspond to Latin _*amātus Deī,*_ even though the form *_Dée_ isn't found either in northern (Old) French or in modern Francoprovençal. It could be a fanciful conversion of the actual Latin word to northern French morphology, or it might reflect some form that actually existed and continued the Latin genitive.

Based on the above, I would reconstruct the name's history as follows:

(?) BHeb. _Dāwīd_ > Lat. _Amātus > _OFrPr._ Amâ(t) > _OFr._ Amé > Grk. Θεόφιλος (> some Germanic motivator?) > _OFr._ Amédée > _MLat._ Amed(a)éus, _It._ Amedeo_ etc.​


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## S.V.

If centuries later you still had "_la mercit Deu, e miens_" (Roland), I also see a participle working, in the south. Then the stress on the last /e/ erases the last vowel. Without a productive pattern for ᴇs _abrelatas_, ɪᴛ _apriscatole_ (_opens-cans_)... & given the nature of frozen meaning, you get that _Am*e*deo_, borrowed.

_Amadeus_, as an adaptation, sounds like that pattern above: _opens-cans_ for this object that opens cans; _loves-God_, for this man who loves God. See also _composti con base verbale_, _compuestos __verbonominales_. One almost as old as Spanish: _Matamoros_.


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## Linnets

In _Dizionario dei nomi italiani_ Emidio De Felice states (sorry, in Italian):



> *Amedèo* [...] M. [...] Distribuito nella forma fondamentale in tutta l'Italia, nelle varianti _Amadeo_ e _Amadio_ solo nel Nord, accentrato in quella _Amaddio_ in Toscana, _Amodeo_ in Sicilia e _Amodio_ in Campania e Puglia, continua un nome cristiano teoforico medievale documentato dall'XI secolo nelle forme latinizzate _Amadeus_, _Amedeus_ e _Amideus_ (e nel 1620, a Firenze, _Homodeus_, che riflette, come in parte la forma _Amodeo_, un incrocio con _Omodeo_). Il nome è composto con le forme del verbo amare '(io) amo', '(tu) ami', '(egli) ama' oppure, all'imperativo, 'ama!'  e _Dio_ o _Deo_, cioè 'amo, ami, ama Dio' o, con valore passivo, 'amato da Dio; che Dio ama'. La diffusione è stata promossa dal fatto che il nome è tradizionale nella casa di Savoia, i cui primi nove conti e duchi o duchi, dall'XI al XV secolo, ebbero appunto ininterrottamente questo nome dinastico (poi continuatosi fino all'età moderna anche nella famiglia collaterale dei duchi d'Aosta), e inoltre dal culto del beato Amedeo IX duca di Savoia e di Sant'Amideo degli Amidei, uno dei sette fondatori, nel 1233, dell'ordine mendicante agostiniano dei Servi Di Maria, sul Monte Senario presso Firenze.


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