Talk:burcgrave

Earliest attestation

@JohnC5 Thanks for creating this entry for the Middle High German burcgrâve. I can't read German, so can you tell me whether your sources say what the date of first attestation for this word is? Does it go back to Old High German, or was it formed in M.H.G.? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 09:46, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym: Grimm, Benecke-Müller-Zarncke, and TLFi have to MHG and no further. If Grimm doesn't have the OHG, I don't know how to find it and the attestation probably does not exist. As to when it was formed, I dunno, probably OHG, if I had to guess? The borrowings look awfully MHGish to me. Maybe Angr would have some insight. —JohnC5 10:00, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Thanks for getting back to me. Do any of those sources give a date of first attestation in M.H.G.? One of your sources seems to cite Rudolf von Ems' Der gute Gerhard (circa 1220) and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (ante 1220), whereas the Trésor looks like it says that the French burgrave is first attested as the Old French bourchgrave in 1413; are there any earlier attestations? Niermeyer gives the date of first attestation of the Mediaeval Latin burchgrāvius as ante 1123. Given that M.H.G. spans 1050–1350, that means that the M.L. word may have an M.H.G., rather than O.H.G., etymon. All my enquiries are directed toward establishing possible etyma for the M.L. word. @Angr Any thoughts? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 18:09, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't really know much about M.H.G. and O.H.G.  I never studied German; I only know it from living in Germany. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. Who are our MHG and OHG editors? I've personally only studied MHG directly. —JohnC5 18:52, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Category:User gmh and Category:User goh are probably good places to start. @-sche, CodeCat, Ealdwimor, Korn, Pgfeller, Purodha, Stardsen Can any of you help with this? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:17, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

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The 1903 Century dictionary (of English) has:

• burgrave, burggrave [...], n. [< F. burgrave = Sp. burgrave = Pg. burgrave, burgravio = It. burgravio, < ML. burggravius, < OHG. burggrāvo, MHG. burcgrāve, G. burggraf (> Dan. borggreve = Sw. burggrefve = Pol. burgrabia = Bohem. purkrabe), < OHG. burg, burc, a town, = E. borough, + grāvjo, grāvo, MHG. grāve, G. graf, a count, earl, governor: see graf.] Formerly, the title, in some European countries, of the hereditary governor of a town or castle.

I'll see if I can find any evidence that the OHG word they mention is actually attested. - -sche (discuss) 20:34, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Google Books shows a snippet of the 1990 Humanistica Lovaniensia, volume 39, page 348, which seems to be a Latin wordlist. It has several words which are not marked with asterisks (e.g. breviarium), and then

• *burggravius (ahd. burggravo) subst.: burgrave  Erasmus Köselerus: Propempticon ... Fabiano Burggravio et Baroni a Dhona. Wittenberg 1570 HL 23 (1974) 407.

So, this reference also seems to think burggravo existed in OHG, but it only actually provides evidence of use in Latin, not evidence of use in OHG. - -sche (discuss) 20:43, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@-sche: Thanks for that. I've added the O.H.G. *burggrāvo to the etymology section in burgrāvius. If that etymon is attested, we can take the asterisk out. :-)  — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:07, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't get the confusion. If we know that both burg and gravo/gravio/greve are OHG terms, can't we just suppose that any gravio of a burg was a burggravio without having to resort to the asterisk? _Korn (talk) 21:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@Korn: Well, no, not unless the term is attested; that's the whole point of the asterisk — to show that a term is believed (for whatever reason) to have existed, but that there isn't the evidence to prove it. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:57, 19 May 2015 (UTC)