# Spanish words from Latin -um ending in consonant



## Dymn

There are some:

Ending in -_n_: _capitán, catalán, cojín, guardián, volcán_
Ending in -_r_: _mercader_

This is especially common in names: _Adrián, Germán, Sebastián...
_
Why don't they end in _-o_? I guess it can be traced back to Gallo-Romance influence (_mercader _at least is from Catalan), but more specifically? Old Occitan, Old French?


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## Cenzontle

Corominas's _Breve diccionario... _
• treats _cojín_ and _mercader_ as borrowings from Catalan, and it seems obvious that we could include the word _catalán_ itself with them.
• takes _guardián_ directly from Gothic WARDJAN ("acusativo de la misma palabra gótica [namely WARDJA]"),
without proposing an intermediate form in spoken Latin.  The Royal Academy dictionary says the same.
• fails to comment on the loss of the final vowel in _capitán_ and _volcán_
("Tom[ado] del b[ajo] lat[ín] _capitanus_"; and "del lat. _Vŭlcānus_".)
The Academy dictionary likewise leaves _capitán_ unexplained, but explains _volcán as "_Del port. _volcão_".
The personal names, of course, don't appear in these dictionaries.


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## Penyafort

_Capitán _looks very old to be a loanword and there's no trace of _capitano_. I'd say that not all -o droppings in Spanish, specially when they're after nasal or liquid, have to come from other languages. Even if the first thought goes to considering these words Gallo-Romance, in the wide sense of it (including Occitan and Catalan, even Aragonese). _Español _itself is an early term too and is a loanword.


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## jazyk

It's v*u*lcão in contemporary Portuguese. I don't doubt, though, that v*o*lcão existed at some point in time.


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## Circunflejo

Cenzontle said:


> The Academy dictionary likewise leaves _capitán_ unexplained


http://dle.rae.es/?w=capitán Did you mean it doesn't explain the loss of the final vowel?


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## soplamocos

Here there is discusion about the -o dropping. I will only add that capitán is one of those words that may be used to refer masculine and femenine, so maybe (it's just a shy guest) there wasn't an oposition between _capitano/capitana_ from _capitanus, _which could be at cause of not being a direct voice from Latin to Spanish_._


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## francisgranada

soplamocos said:


> ...I will only add that capitán is one of those words that may be used to refer masculine and femenine, so maybe (it's just a shy guest) there wasn't an oposition between _capitano/capitana_ from _capitanus ..._


I don't know, but today the feminine form is (logically) _capitana_.

In my opinion the words without the final _-o_ are mostly borrowed from French/Catalan/etc., or spontaneously created by analogy with other already existing terms. To the contrary, in Italian an _-o_ is typically added to the end even if in the  borrowing language no final  vowel appears, as normally no standard Italian (Tuscan) noun ends in consonant. E.g. It. _coran*o*_, Sp. _(al)corán*-*._


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## fdb

francisgranada said:


> no standard Italian (Tuscan) noun ends in consonant.


 
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita....


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## merquiades

Penyafort said:


> _Capitán _looks very old to be a loanword and there's no trace of _capitano_. I'd say that not all -o droppings in Spanish, specially when they're after nasal or liquid, have to come from other languages. Even if the first thought goes to considering these words Gallo-Romance, in the wide sense of it (including Occitan and Catalan, even Aragonese). _Español _itself is an early term too and is a loanword.


Very old indeed,
The Spanish -_an_ words usually exist in Portuguese as -_ão_ with -_ães_ (corresponding to -_an_ with -_anes_ in Spanish) plurals:  _capitães_ (capitanes)_, Catalães _(catalanes) and add others like _pães, cães _(panes, canes)....    This should mean they were introduced very early in the development of the (2) languages before nasalization and the absorption of the n had occurred in Portuguese.

In Portuguese, vulcão has a _vulcões_ plural (unlike volcán, volcanes), such as those corresponding to Spanish -_ón_: _leão > leões_, _camião > camiões _(león/leones, camión/camiones). I'm not sure what this reveals about the origin or the time it was introduced in the language.  Maybe Jazyk knows.
Most -ano words in Spanish have -ãos plurals in Portuguese and are more numerous:   _irmão>irmãos_, _mão > mãos _(hermano(s), mano(s))

As most _án_ words tend to be the same in Portuguese (-_ão_ with -_ães_ plural) it points to a common origin or very very old loanwords.  At any rate, they haven't ended in -_o_ for a millennium.


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## Dymn

That's interesting. Gallo-Romance influence probably took place at a time when Provençal literature had peak prestige and Castilian still didn't play a preeminent role within the Iberian Peninsula, so it may have entered at a pretty early stage, the suffix _-aje/-agem.
_
I also thought Portuguese _-ão _corresponded to Spanish _-án_, but since there's also _mão _as you say which comes from _manu_, it made me doubt. I guess _-ano _is a learned suffix.


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## merquiades

Dymn said:


> That's interesting. Gallo-Romance influence probably took place at a time when Provençal literature had peak prestige and Castilian still didn't play a preeminent role within the Iberian Peninsula, so it may have entered at a pretty early stage, the suffix _-aje/-agem.
> _
> I also thought Portuguese _-ão _corresponded to Spanish _-án_, but since there's also _mão _as you say which comes from _manu_, it made me doubt. I guess _-ano _is a learned suffix.


_As Cantigas de Santa Maria _from the 12th century already showed nasalization and intervocalic n disappearing, maybe it was commonplace even before that, so I'd assume the vocabulary ending in -án (_ão_) would have had to come to the Iberian Peninsula before the 12th century.  Wasn't Provençal at its pinnacle a few centuries after that time?

Edit:  I suppose the Way of St. James was in full swing before the 12th century and had brought numerous pilgrims on the trail from France since at least 700.  So, there are many ways to account for Provençal and or Gallo-Romanic influences in northern Spain and Galicia...


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## soplamocos

About _volcán<vulcão. _There are some old mountains (_sierras_) near were I live. In the past they were call _vulcán _(one can read that in old maps, from around 1700-1800) while today they are call _volcán._ Maybe that -u- points a Portuguese origin.


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## merquiades

soplamocos said:


> About _volcán<vulcão. _There are some old mountains (_sierras_) near were I live. In the past they were call _vulcán _(one can read that in old maps, from around 1700-1800) while today they are call _volcán._ Maybe that -u- points a Portuguese origin.


_O _being weakened to _u_ in unstressed syllables happens in many Romance languages and is pretty routine in Portuguese, so the pronunciation is the same whether they decide to write it with _o_ or _u_. 
I bet in some dialects of Spanish this occurs too, so it's not surprising you might find _vulcán_ on a map.  It was probably corrected in recent times as people became more literate and aware of correct spelling.  In 1700 there was probably a lot of illiteracy.
I still wonder if _*vulcón/vulcones_ exists somewhere. Probably not.


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## Dymn

merquiades said:


> so I'd assume the vocabulary ending in -án (_ão_) would have had to come to the Iberian Peninsula before the 12th century.


Why? It could well be that it was adapted from _-an _as _-ão _(plural_ -ães_), not as a phonetic change but as a way to better fit the language. I know the digraphs _nh _and _lh _were due to Occitan influence, but I don't know what century they might have been adopted.



merquiades said:


> I'm not sure what this reveals about the origin or the time it was introduced in the language.


My uneducated guess is that having three ways to form plurals for just one singular form is likely to render these kinds of confusion, especially if it's a learned word that laymen don't use much often, and as far as I know there are no volcanoes in the Portuguese mainland.


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## merquiades

Dymn said:


> Why? It could well be that it was adapted from _-an _as _-ão _(plural_ -ães_), not as a phonetic change but as a way to better fit the language. I know the digraphs _nh _and _lh _were due to Occitan influence, but I don't know what century they might have been adopted.


 I guess anything is possible.   Concerning adopting lh and nh, I found this information on wikipedia.  





> The digraphs _lh_ and _nh_, used in classical Occitan orthography, were adopted into the orthography of Portuguese, presumably by Gerald de Braga, a monk from Moissac, who became the bishop of Braga in Portugal in 1047.  He played a major role in modernizing written Portuguese by applying classical Occitan norms






			
				Dymn said:
			
		

> My uneducated guess is that having three ways to form plurals for just one singular form is likely to render these kinds of confusion, especially if it's a learned word that laymen don't use much often, and as far as I know there are no volcanoes in the Portuguese mainland.


  If someone knows the Spanish plural, the Portuguese plural seems easy, you normally just remove the n in the Spanish plural and nasalize the first vowel, but that would assume Portuguese laymen know Spanish...   There are volcanoes in the Azores and Madeira.  The last one to erupt apparently was in 1964 Sistema Volcânico O Pico do Cachorro.


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## Dymn

merquiades said:


> I guess anything is possible. Concerning adopting lh and nh, I found this information on wikipedia.


Thanks! It seems much earlier than what I thought. Probably this applies to other influences from Occitan and Gallo-Romance in general as well.



merquiades said:


> but that would assume Portuguese laymen know Spanish...


Which they don't.



merquiades said:


> There are volcanoes in the Azores and Madeira.


That's why I said Portuguese mainland. Azores and Madeira weren't colonized until the 15th century.


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## Cossue

Dymn said:


> Gallo-Romance influence probably took place at a time when Provençal literature had peak prestige



Yep. Essentially Old Provençal had a large impact in Galician-Portugese lyrics and lyrical literary language, while Old French had a larger impact -at least for Galician- on the common vocabulary and, specially, the nautical terminology. These lists are far from complete, but they are still informative:
Category:Galician terms derived from Old Occitan - Wiktionary
Category:Galician terms derived from Old French - Wiktionary

Old Provençal and Old French influences came with Provençal lyrics and the Way of Saint James, but also with Cluny, the resurgence of maritime comerce since the 12th century, and with the officials of count Raymond of Burgundy, or of Bérenger de Landore.

As for the extension of the use of the digraphs nh and lh in Portuguese, I would say that it is a process that apparently began in 1260; here is a nice collection of early (till 1270) Galician and Portuguese charters, edited by a linguist: http://illa.udc.es/rgf/pdf/mon_5.PDF.


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## Circunflejo

soplamocos said:


> About _volcán<vulcão. _There are some old mountains (_sierras_) near were I live. In the past they were call _vulcán _(one can read that in old maps, from around 1700-1800) while today they are call _volcán._ Maybe that -u- points a Portuguese origin.



Pedro de Angelis says in the page 1 of the _proemio al diario de la expedición a la sierra del Vulcán_, included in the 6th volume of the _Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Río de la Plata,_ printed in Buenos Aires in 1837, that vulcan is an _araucana_ word meaning _juntos por la base_.


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## Cossue

Re. *capitán *(with derivative _capitanía _documented circa 1300) in Spanish,  Joan Coromines wrote in his unabridged DCECH that it was probably a borrowing from Catalan or from Occitan:



> En todas las lenguas romances capitán es semicultismo tomado del b. latín; la falta de -o en castellano indica como probable que aquí se tomara del catalán (o menos probablemente de la lengua de Oc), quizá como término náutico



With respect to some other words which ends in *-án* (DCECH s.v. haragán):



> Parece haber realmente un sufijo -án sacado de los NPP germ. en -A, -ANS, y representado (además de barragán, haragán y holgazán) por zarzagán, mostagán y bausán. Lo que parece confirmar este origen es la frecuencia del sufijo en Galicia, tierra donde tanto abunda el legado germánico. Ahí podría creerse que -án viene del lat. -ÁNUS, lo cual es regular fonéticamente en varios lugares de Galicia, pero los demás, junto con el castellano, nos muestran que no es así, pues en éstos (p. ej. en el Limia) -ANE da -áŋ y no -áu, que es el resultado que allí tiene -ANU: ahora bien el sufijo personal en cuestión tiene allí la forma -áŋ; p. ej. en el Limia priguizaŋ y lacazaŋ ‘holgazán’, cagarán ‘pedorro’, fungáŋ  ‘persona de habla gangosa’, forragadáŋ ‘tacaño’ (quizá de forra-guadaña, pero en todo caso asimilado a nuestro sufijo), vid. Schneider VKR XI, glos. Es una proliferación parecida a la de las terminaciones onomásticas germánicas -ard, -aud en francés, etc. (badaud, vantard, etc.).


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## soplamocos

Circunflejo said:


> Pedro de Angelis says in the page 1 of the _proemio al diario de la expedición a la sierra del Vulcán_, included in the 6th volume of the _Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Río de la Plata,_ printed in Buenos Aires in 1837, that vulcan is an _araucana_ word meaning _juntos por la base_.


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## Dymn

Does anyone know why the Genoese explorer is called _Cristóbal Colón_ in Spanish? In both Ligurian and Toscan/Italian the final vowel remains. Catalan/Occitan/French influence as well? _Colom_ means pigeon in Catalan.


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## bearded

fdb said:


> Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita....


''Cammin'' is poetic only.  Normally it's ''cammino'', as you are certainly aware.



Dymn said:


> _Cristóbal Colón_ in Spanish


In Italian he is called Cristòforo Colombo, and 'colombo' means pigeon in Italian as well.  'Colón/Colom' might be just a translation.


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## merquiades

It's _Christophe Colomb_ in French but the b is silent so it similar to the Spanish _Colón_. I suspect a common origin.  Spanish would change a final nasal vowel---om to -ón.   _Une colombe_ is a dove in French.

What is his name in Genovese?  I've been told that final vowels tend to drop like in French or Provençal.


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## bearded

merquiades said:


> What is his name in Genovese?


Someone from Genova will hopefully reply.  But I suspect they leave it unchanged - as in standard Italian.


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## merquiades

The question is what did Columbus call himself?  He wrote out lots of documents in Spanish.  He must have used Colón.
If he did so, how did he come to that?

Edit:  I checked his signature.   He clearly signs Colom in his correspondence.


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## Dymn

bearded said:


> In Italian he is called Cristòforo Colombo, and 'colombo' means pigeon in Italian as well. 'Colón/Colom' might be just a translation.


But "_colón_" doesn't mean anything in Spanish. Latin _columbus _would have yielded _colomo_ in Spanish, but it doesn't exist either, "pigeon" is _paloma_.



merquiades said:


> What is his name in Genovese? I've been told that final vowels tend to drop like in French or Provençal.


According to Wikipedia, _Christoffa Corombo _/kriˈʃtɔffa kuˈɹuŋbu/. Ligurian is an exception among Gallo-Italic languages in that it doesn't drop final _o_.


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## Circunflejo

Dymn said:


> But "_colón_" doesn't mean anything in Spanish.


It has a meaning (un colón es el que se cuela mucho) but it isn't related with pigeons.


Dymn said:


> Latin _columbus _would have yielded _colomo_ in Spanish, but it doesn't exist either


It exists _colombo _as part of the word _colombofilia _(raising and training of pigeons).


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## merquiades

I don't think it's important if Colón means anything in Spanish or not.  He obviously called himself Colom, for some reason, and it was just adapted (perhaps at a much later time) to Colón.



Dymn said:


> According to Wikipedia, _Christoffa Corombo _/kriˈʃtɔffa kuˈɹuŋbu/. Ligurian is an exception among Gallo-Italic languages in that it doesn't drop final _o_.


  Yes, in Piedmontese it's _Colomb_.

Perhaps it would be interesting to find out where people have the family name Columbus, Colombo, Colom(b), Corombo etc.


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## Circunflejo

merquiades said:


> He obviously called himself Colom, for some reason, and it was just adapted (perhaps at a much later time) to Colón.


 In the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe (April of 1492 before Columbus first voyage), it already appears Colon (no tilde) in the text. See: Capitulaciones de Santa Fe - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre


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## merquiades

He clearly wrote Colom in his Letter to the monarchs announcing his discovery.


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