familia

Forms

familia f (plural familias)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin familia (“household; the slaves and servants of a house”), a learned word.^[2][3][4] The Latin noun belongs with famulus (“servant, slave”); the Spanish dictionaries derive it from that word.^[2][3][5]

De Vaan reconstructs *famelia (“household”) and *famelos (“slave”), with Oscan and Umbrian cognates.^[6] Following Rix, he and Wiktionary take the word for “servant” as a back-formation from the word for the household, which may go back to Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁-m-elo- (“fundament”), from the root *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place”), with a shift from “foundation” to “house”.^[6][1] It is then related to Ancient Greek θέμις (thémis, “law, justice”) and θεμέλιος (themélios, “of the foundation”).^[6][1] In 1611 Covarrubias derived it from an Oscan word for “servant”.^[7]

In other Romance languages the Latin word was inherited: Italian famiglia first meant “servants”, and Romanian femeie means “woman”.^[8] French famille is a learned borrowing of 1337.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo uses the word in Del sacrificio de la misa (1228–1246, in a copy of the early 14th century) for the congregation of the faithful: „toda la familia ufre esta oblada” “all the congregation offers this offering”.^[10][2][11] The Vidal Mayor (c. 1250) uses it for a household sharing goods.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Under the Partidas the familia took in the lord, his wife, his children and his servants; the Autoridades still quoted that law as its first definition.^[2][12] The modern sense, the group of relatives, is found by 1490 in Alfonso de Palencia and in Nebrija, and is usual in the Golden Age.^[2] Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as the people a lord keeps in his house, and noted that it also took in the ancestors of a line, as la familia de los Césares.^[7]

The 1884 dictionary of the Academy kept “the servants of a person” and added two senses: in some provinces of Spain, a child, especially a son, and in natural history a group of animals or plants.^[13] The DLE today defines the family by marriage, kinship or living together, extends it to any group sharing a condition or an ideology, and keeps the sense “servants” last.^[4] In Chile familia is a swarm of bees.^[4][14]

Timeline

• 1228–1246 – Berceo uses the word for a congregation.^[10][2]
• c. 1250 – the Vidal Mayor, the first record without a later copy.^[10]
• 1276–1279 – Alfonso X's prose speaks of a large family and good company.^[15]
• 1374 – first record of familiaridad.^[3]
• 1438 – first record of familiar.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin familia and domus.^[16]
• 1541 – a household of several neighbours and their relatives in Michoacán, the first record from the Americas.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the phrase padre de familias.^[7]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the sense used in natural history.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A family: a group of people joined by marriage, kinship or living together.^[4][1]
2. The ancestors, descendants and other relatives of a lineage.^[4]
3. Children, offspring: Llevan diez años casados y todavía no tienen familia.^[4]
4. A group of people who share a condition, opinion or tendency, or the members of a religious, political or sports body.^[4]
5. A set of things with common features: la familia de los metales.^[4]
6. (colloquial) A group of close friends or companions.^[4]
7. (biology) A taxon made up of several related genera.^[4]
8. (Chile) A swarm of bees.^[4][14]
9. (dated) The servants of a household.^[4]

Word family

• familiar
• familiaridad
• familiarizar

Related words

• fámulo
• Latin familia
• Latin famulus

Usage notes

In linguistics familia de lenguas is a language family and familia de palabras a word family.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 846
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. familia
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. familia
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. familia
6. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 830
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. familia
11. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 251
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 717
13. ^ 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. 487
14. ^ 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. familia
15. ^ 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. familia
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 353
17. ^ 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. familia