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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word romance

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Inherited
First attested
c. 1140 Cantar de mio Cid More words from the 12th century
Inherited from
Latin romanice
Ultimate origin
Latin Rōmānus

Pronunciation

  • /roˈmanθe/, [roˈmãn̟.θe], /roˈmanse/[1]

Forms

romance m (plural romances)[1] Old Spanish wrote romanz, romanze, romantz, romançe and romance;[2][3] Berceo used both romanz and romance.[2][3]

Etymology

Corominas takes it to be inherited from Latin rōmānice (“in the Roman way”), an adverb first applied to the speech of the Romans and later to the spoken language of the Romanised peoples.[3][4] Speaking “in the Roman way”, as against Latin, made it the name of the language, and later of works written in it.[4] The DLE gives the same etymon.[5] Wiktionary instead takes the word as a borrowing from Old Occitan romans or Old French romanz, from a Vulgar Latin adverb of that form, and Meyer-Lübke derives the Spanish and Portuguese word, like Italian romanzo, from the Occitan one.[1][6]

The same adverb gave French roman (recorded from about 1135), Catalan romanç, Portuguese romanço and Romansh rumantsch, the name of Romansh.[7][8][6][1] The Latin adverb is formed on rōmānicus (“Roman, of the Roman type”), a word already used by Cato, which is Rōmānus (“of Rome”) with the suffix -icus.[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140).[3][4] The earliest hit in the CDH not known from a later copy is in the Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223), where the word names the vernacular as against Latin: lo que nos dezimos en rromançe “what we call in Romance”.[10] In the 13th century it meant both the language and a text written in it: Berceo's Vida de San Millán is a story tornada de latín en romançe “turned from Latin into Romance”.[10][11]

Semantic evolution

From the language the name passed to writings in it, above all narrative verse, and finally to the short ballad into which the old epic poems broke up in the 15th century.[4] Covarrubias (1611) still called it the common name of Tuscan, French and Spanish, the languages that came from Latin.[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as “our language” and as the poem with the same assonance in every even line; in the plural it also meant idle talk or excuses.[13][3]

The sense “novel; love story”, common in the Americas, was called a crude Anglicism by Corominas.[3][4] Vox treats romance “short, intense love affair” as a borrowing of the English word romance, and the Academy's dictionary has admitted this sense since 1992.[14][15]

Timeline

  • c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid.[3][4]
  • c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo contrasts what is said en rromançe with the Latin word.[10]
  • c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán (in an 18th-century copy) is announced as turned from Latin into Romance.[10]
  • 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X gives the name of lead in Latin, in romanz and in Arabic.[11]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija translates it sermo romanus.[16][17]
  • 1516 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico: two prayer books en romance.[18]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias calls it the common name of Tuscan, French and Spanish.[12]
  • 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives its first etymology, from Low Latin romancia lingua.[19]
  • 1992 – the Academy's dictionary admits the sense “love affair”.[15]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Romance: of the languages that descend from Latin: el léxico romance.[5][1]

Noun

  1. A Romance language, such as Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Italian or French.[5]
  2. The Spanish language, as opposed to Latin or to non-Romance languages.[5][1]
  3. A brief love affair.[5][1]
  4. A novel or romance of chivalry, in prose or verse.[5][1]
  5. A flamenco style of very old origin, based on the ballad.[5]
  6. (prosody) A metre of Spanish origin in octosyllables, with the same assonance in every even line and the odd lines unrhymed.[5]
  7. (literature) A ballad written in that metre, traditional in origin, cultivated from the 15th century to the present.[5]
  8. (in the plural) Tales or excuses: No me vengas con romances.[5]

Word family

  • romancero
  • romancear
  • romancillo
  • romancista
  • romano
  • románico
  • romántico
  • French roman

Usage notes

En buen romance means “plainly, so that everyone understands”, and hablar en romance “to speak clearly, without beating about the bush”.[5] Romance andalusí is the DLE's name for mozárabe, the Romance speech of al-Andalus.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. romance
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 49
  4. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. romano
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. romance
  6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7370
  7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. roman
  8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. romanço
  9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. romanicus
  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. romance
  11. ^ a b 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. romance
  12. ^ 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. 1270
  13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 634
  14. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. romance 2
  15. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. romance
  16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 410
  17. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. romance
  18. ^ 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. romance
  19. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 939

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Romance.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/romance. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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