Etymologically
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natal

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈneɪtəl/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nātālis (“of or belonging to birth; presiding over birthdays”),[2][3][4][5][6] from nātus (“born”), the past participle of nāscor (“to be born”),[3][4][5][7] with the suffix -ālis.[2][8][9] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace the verb to Proto-Indo-European *gene- (“to give birth, beget”).[3][4] The OED takes the adjective partly from French natal as well, and the rare noun from Middle French natal, birthday.[2] The word is a learned doublet of noel, the vernacular French form.[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Presiding over births or birthdays: about 1385, in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, of the god Jove;[2][5][10] Etymonline dates this sense, "of or pertaining to birthdays", to the late 14th century.[3] Chaucer used the word only once.[11]

Semantic evolution

Chaucer's sense of a god presiding over births did not last beyond the 15th century.[2][12] From about 1440 the word meant native, of the place where a person was born or a plant first grew,[2][13] a sense now chiefly literary.[2] From 1447 it was used for anything relating to or dating from a person's birth;[2][3] by 1500 it also named the hour or day of birth.[2][14] Johnson (1755) defined it as "native; relating to nativity" and quoted Camden on princes named after their natal places.[15] A noun natal, a birthday feast or celebration, borrowed from French, was used rarely from 1484 to 1634.[2][14] Collins now calls the sense "native" rare.[16]

Timeline

  • c. 1385 – presiding over births, of a god (obsolete), in Chaucer.[2][5]
  • c. 1440 – native, of a place of birth or origin.[2][13]
  • 1447 – relating to or dating from a person's birth.[2][14]
  • 1484 – noun, a birthday feast (obsolete).[2]
  • before 1500 – of the hour or day of birth.[2][14]
  • 1597 – noun, in the plural, a birthday celebration (obsolete by 1634).[2]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Relating to, accompanying or present at birth: The midwife watched for natal complications.[4][8][16]
  2. Relating to the time or place of one's birth, or (chiefly literary) native: They returned to their natal village.[4][2][8]
  3. (obsolete) Of a god, presiding over births or birthdays.[2][12][13]

Word family

  • natality
  • neonatal
  • perinatal
  • postnatal
  • prenatal
  • pronatalism

Usage notes

A separate adjective natal, of the buttocks, is formed from Latin natis, buttock (see nates), and is recorded from 1870.[2][12][8] The South African province of Natal, now part of KwaZulu-Natal, was named Terra Natalis by Vasco da Gama, who sighted its coast on Christmas Day 1497;[2][17] the name is stressed on the second syllable.[2][16]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  10. ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  12. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  14. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  16. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  17. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press