castellano

Forms

castellano (feminine castellana, masculine plural castellanos, feminine plural castellanas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish castellano, inherited from Latin castellānus (“of a fortress”).^[2][1][3] The Latin adjective is formed from castellum (“fort, stronghold”) with the suffix -ānus, and the noun is a diminutive of castrum (“fortified camp”); the same noun gave castillo.^[4][5][6] In Latin the adjective also served as a noun for the occupants of a fortress, and in Medieval Latin for the lord or warden of a castle.^[4][7]

Corominas lists the sense “lord or warden of a castle” among the derivatives of castillo.^[5][6] The name of the region, Castilla, comes from the Latin neuter plural castella (“forts”), which left many place names across the Peninsula, and Wiktionary takes the sense “Castilian” as an adjective formed on that name.^[5][1] The variant castellán, used of the castellan of Amposta, comes from Catalan castellà, and the Old Aragonese carlán from the Catalan contracted forms castlà and carlà.^[5]

The same Latin word is Portuguese castelão, Galician castelán, Italian castellano and French châtelain.^[8][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the Cantar de mio Cid (about 1140) and lists it with the sense “lord or warden of a castle”.^[5][6] Menéndez Pidal's vocabulary of the poem records it as the adjective “Castilian”: mesnadas castellanas “Castilian troops”, varones castellanos “Castilian men”, and as an epithet of the Cid and of King Alfonso VI.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Berceo uses the adjective, and in the plural the noun for the people of Castile.^[12] Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of translating from Arabic into lenguaie castellano, and the Estoria de España already uses el castellano alone for the language.^[13]

The word also named a gold coin, worth 490 maravedís under the Catholic Monarchs, and the fiftieth part of the gold mark, a weight often named in 16th-century documents from the Americas.^[14][15][16] Covarrubias gave three senses: a native of Castile, a coin and the warden of a castle.^[17] Autoridades said that the title of castellan was still kept in some places, and Terreros recorded it for an office in Poland.^[15][18] The Academy marked the castellan as old in 1817, and in 1884 defined the language as the national language of Spain.^[16][19]

The DLE now separates the Spanish language, especially as distinguished from the other languages of Spain, the medieval dialect of Castile from which Spanish mainly comes, and the variety spoken today in the north of the old kingdom.^[2] In Chile the adjective describes poultry of a greyish, black-and-white speckled colour, said to come from the first hens brought from Castile.^[20][21]

Timeline

• 1022 – DEMel's earliest record, in the cartulary of San Millán de la Cogolla.^[22]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid.^[6][11]
• c. 1230–1260 – Berceo uses the adjective “of Castile”.^[12]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of lenguaie castellano.^[13]
• 1270–1284 – the Estoria de España uses el castellano for the language.^[13]
• 1528 – first record in the Americas, in Santa Marta, of the gold coin.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the senses “Castilian”, the coin and “warden of a castle”.^[17]
• 1817 – the Academy marks the sense “warden of a castle” as old.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy defines the language as the national language of Spain.^[19]
• 1917 – Alemany records the Chilean sense used of hens.^[21]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Castilian: of or from Castile or the former kingdom of Castile; also as a noun, a native of Castile.^[2][1]
2. Of or relating to the Castilian language, dialect or variety: un diccionario castellano.^[2]
3. Of a hen: of a black breed that lays well.^[2]
4. (Chile) Of poultry: of a speckled black-and-white, greyish colour.^[20][1]

Noun

1. The Spanish language, especially when distinguished from the other languages of Spain.^[2][1]
2. The Romance dialect of Castile from which Spanish mainly derives.^[2]
3. The variety of Spanish spoken in the north of the former kingdom of Castile.^[2]
4. A castellan: the lord, or the warden or governor, of a castle.^[2][23]
5. (historical) A man-at-arms with two mounts (lanza).^[2]
6. (historical) A gold coin of medieval Castile; also the fiftieth part of the gold mark, a unit of weight.^[2][23]
7. (Álava) The south wind.^[23]

Word family

• castellanamente
• castellanía
• castellanidad
• castellanismo
• castellanista
• castellanizar
• castellanohablante
• castellanoleonés
• castellanomanchego
• castellanoparlante

Related words

• Castilla
• castillo
• Latin castellānus
• Portuguese castelão

Usage notes

Wiktionary notes that the use of castellano for the Spanish language in general is sometimes taken as offensive.^[1] Castellano nuevo and castellano viejo refer to New and Old Castile.^[23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. castellano
3. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. castellānus
4. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 917
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. castillo
7. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. castellanus
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. castellanus
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 103
10. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. châtelain
11. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. castellano
12. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 103
13. ^ a b c Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. castellano
14. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. castellano
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. castellano
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 187
17. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 456
18. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 377
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 224
20. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. castellano
21. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 349
22. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. castellano
23. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. castellano