# Heit - Father



## lz89z1

Does anyone have an idea where Frisian Heit (Father) originates from? And how old it might be? It seems so different from Indo-European.


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## ahvalj

Wiktionary Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/attô - Wiktionary relates it to the well-known Indo-European domestic word for "father" but I don't imagine how it can be phonetically possible.


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## ahvalj

Continuing the guesswork: in the nearby languages the diphthong is found in Polabian (Polabian language - Wikipedia): aita - Wiktionary


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## ahvalj

Another guess: connection with the Gothic _aiþei,_ Old Norse _eiða_ and Middle High German _eide_ "mother", Old High German _fuotareidî_ "nanny" ("food-mother"; aiþei - Wiktionary). The Common Germanic *_ai_ cannot result in the Frisian _ei,_ but (1) the latter is secondary in all cases anyway, and (2) this seems to be a nursery word and they often escape regular changes being compromises between genetically programmed children words and the speech of the adults.


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## lz89z1

ahvalj said:


> Wiktionary Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/attô - Wiktionary relates it to the well-known Indo-European domestic word for "father" but I don't imagine how it can be phonetically possible.



Thanks for all of your contributions!


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## ahvalj

Unfortunately, nothing definite: neither of the two recent Germanic etymological dictionaries (_Orel VE · 2003 · A handbook of Germanic etymology_ and _Kroonen G · 2013 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic_) mentions this word.

By the way, I have corrected the link in #4: I always forget that the WordReference module breaks urls with Gothic characters. To get to the page I intended, follow the link and then click _Romanization of …_.


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## lz89z1

So where does the h- come from in Heit? If non of the other OLD languages ever got an h- before the att, aita etc. Cant think of any other words in Frisian that got an h- in front of a word where other languages haven't....


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## luitzen

A long time ago I looked up this word as well and I think that any similarities to atto were coincidences. The first thing to do when trying to answer such questions is to compare to it's closest relatives and ancestor languages. English does not have anything similar and the Saterfrisian word for father is Baabe while the Old Frisian word is feder (which does not exist in modern West Frisian anymore) . Maybe Old Frisian had two words like father/dad, but I couldn't find any evidence of this.

I think similarities to North Frisian are completely coincidental here and as such the form heit must be a fairly recent development.

I'm pulling this all from my memory, so it might not be correct though.


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## francisgranada

Another idea/guess: connection with the Basque _aita_ (=father).


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## luitzen

francisgranada said:


> Another idea/guess: connection with the Basque _aita_ (=father).


There's really no interaction between Basque and Frisian without at least two other languages. This word would need to be in other languages as well for this to be the case.


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## luitzen

This is a more likely origin of the word: hatan - Wiktionary


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## francisgranada

luitzen said:


> There's really no interaction between Basque and Frisian without at least two other languages ...


Yes, I know. It was only an idea as there are also words characteristic for a certain geographical region/territory, even if the circumstances of their distribution are not known and/or not documented. But I agree with you, the direct Basque influence seems to be very improbable.

On the other hand, for the term "father" we find words like _aba, apa, papa, ata, atta, tata ..._ in various languages (including Latin) _independently_. They are generally supposed to originate in children's language (like _ama_, _mama, mamma, ..._ for "mother").  A _Non_-Indo-European example, for illustration: In Hungarian "father" is _atya _and _apa_, colloquially also _papa_, _tata_.

I (unfortunately) cannot explain the diphthong _ei_ and the initial _h_  in the Frisian _heit_. However, the word initial _h_ (in general) seems to be quite unstable and the diphthong _ei _might be result of a later evolution. So, hypothetically, _heit _might be also result of a "local"  children's language, independently on other languages or on a possible Indo-European (or common Germanic) origin. (This is only an idea ...)


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## ilocas2

The initial _h_ could be from the word _hy_ (= _he_ in English).


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## luitzen

It's all interesting, I do not believe that it would come from he+dad. It sounds more like Hiawatha language and is not typical of Frisian.

Most likely heit means "the one who calls the shots".


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## francisgranada

ilocas2 said:


> The initial _h_ could be from the word _hy_ (= _he_ in English).


Absolutely not, of course. And you know it very well ...


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## ilocas2

I want to say that my post was meant *100%-ly seriously*, it was just a sudden idea.


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## lz89z1

luitzen said:


> This is a more likely origin of the word: hatan - Wiktionary



So although I could imagine that the meaning of hatan would be "the one that commands" and therefor Heit="the head of the family", why would that only have survived in Modern Frisian as and nothing similar for a commander/chairperson/chief or anything similar in no Germanic language at all?


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