Spanish words from Proto-Germanic
7 Spanish words with Proto-Germanic in their history, whether borrowed directly or passed on through other languages.
banco
It is borrowed from Proto-Germanic *bankiz (“bench”), a Germanic word that Vulgar Latin had already taken over throughout the Western Empire. The DLE and Wiktionary name Old French bank as the…
blanco
It is borrowed from Proto-Germanic *blank (“shining, white”), the Germanic adjective that survives, now rare, in German blank. Corominas takes the kept initial cluster /bl/ as a sign of a late…
gualda
It is a Germanic plant name, borrowed from Proto-Germanic *walda (“weld”), but Corominas cannot decide whether Spanish took it directly from Gothic or from Frankish through early French, where it…
guardar
It is borrowed from Proto-Germanic *wardōn (“to watch, guard”), a verb that Vulgar Latin had already taken from common West Germanic, and it is shared by all the western Romance languages…
guisa
It is borrowed from Proto-Germanic *wīsō (“way, manner”), which Corominas thinks Vulgar Latin probably took from West Germanic, so that all the Western Romance languages inherited it. Wiktionary…
lista
It continues inherited from Vulgar Latin *lista, a borrowing from Proto-West Germanic *līstā (“strip, band, border”). Corominas notes that the word is already in the Latin glossary ascribed to…
sala
It is a Germanic word, borrowed from Proto-Germanic *saliz (“hall, house”), the name of a building that consisted of a single large reception room. Corominas thinks it uncertain whether it came into…