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copil

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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word copil

Confidence
Disputed
First attested
1318 personal name of a Romanian in Serbia More words from the 14th century

Pronunciation

Forms

copil m (plural copii, feminine equivalent copilă)[1] The old and regional cópil, plural copili, meant “bastard”: Îndreptarea legii says „acela copil ce va face se chiamă cópil” “the child he begets is called a bastard”.[2][3] DELR records the regional variants cópchil (Maramureș) and cupil.[3]

Etymology

Its origin is uncertain.[4][3][5] It is a word shared by the Balkan languages, with Albanian kopil (“bastard; servant”), Byzantine Greek κόπελος (kópelos, “youth, servant, bastard”), Bulgarian копеле (kópele, “bastard; boy”), Serbo-Croatian kopile (“bastard”) and Old Church Slavonic копелъ (kopelŭ, “bastard”).[3][4][6]

Ciorănescu holds that the other languages took it from Romanian: the word cannot be explained from any known language, its spread points to a Romanian starting point, and its unstressed ⟨o⟩ and final /l/ rule out an inherited Latin word.[4] The DA reached the same view: the Greek word is not old, and the Albanian one, without derivatives, looks borrowed.[7] Many scholars, from Miklosich and Berneker to Sandfeld, Capidan and Rosetti, trace it to a pre-Roman language of the Balkans, which Romanian may have taken directly as a substrate word.[3][4] DELR notes that the Albanian form, with its unreduced vowels, looks like a loan, and finds Oštir's Albanian explanation, from a prefix ⟨ko-⟩ and pjell (“to give birth”), hard to accept.[3]

A second view derives it from Proto-Slavic *kopylъ (“shoot”), from *kopati (“to dig”), with a shift from “shoot” to “bastard”;[3][1] DELR finds this problematic, since those senses occur only in South Slavic and in the Slavic dialects next to Romanian.[3][1] Coteanu derived the Greek words from Vulgar Latin *copella, from cōpa (“barmaid”), through “young servant”.[3] Older derivations from pūpillus (Laurian, Scriban), from Greek (Cihac), from Slavic (Philippide, Tiktin), from Albanian (Densusianu, Capidan) or from Gepidic (Diculescu) have not convinced.[4]

The forms south of the Danube, Aromanian cochil (“bastard; lad”) and Megleno-Romanian copil (“bastard”), lack the palatalized labial and are probably loans from the neighbouring languages;[3] Papahagi and Capidan derive them from Bulgarian.[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a personal name: a Romanian in Serbia in 1318.[3][2] In Romanian texts the word first means “bastard”: DELR's first record is cópil in Lucaci's Pravila of 1581.[3] A deed of 1597 from Suceava already lists „o Țigancă anume Frăsina și un copil Onofrei” “a Gypsy woman named Frăsina and a child, Onofrei”.[7]

Semantic evolution

In the old language the usual words for “child” were cocon, fecior and prunc;[3] copil meant “illegitimate child”.[3] The modern sense appears at the beginning of the 17th century, in Moxa's chronicle (1620), and spread through the 17th and 18th centuries over the Daco-Romanian area, except in the north-west.[3] Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 still uses it to gloss the Slavonic words for a child born of adultery as well as for a child.[10] DELR rejects the view of two words, a substrate copíl “child” and a Slavic cópil “bastard”: the two are one word that split as the new sense reached regions that kept the old one.[3]

The sense “side shoot” is recorded in the Bible of 1688.[3] In the old principalities copii de casă were young pages at the prince's court.[5][11] The loans in Ukrainian and Slovak dialects mean “bastard”.[3]

Timeline

  • 1318 – a personal name, borne by a Romanian in Serbia.[3][2]
  • 1559 – the feminine copilă.[3]
  • 1581 – cópil “bastard” in Lucaci's Pravila.[3]
  • 1597 – copil in a deed from Suceava.[7]
  • 1620 – the modern sense “child”, in Moxa's chronicle.[3]
  • 1635 – copilărie “childhood”.[3]
  • 1648 – copilaș “little child” and copilăresc “childish”.[3]
  • c. 1650 – copilandru “lad”.[3]
  • 1688 – the sense “side shoot”, and the verb copili “to remove the side shoots”, in the Bible.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. child: a boy or girl before adolescence;[5][12] copil de școală, a schoolchild;[5][12] copil mic, a baby.[5][12]
  2. a youth, an adolescent; formerly copil de casă, a page at the prince's or a great boyar's court;[5][12] copil de trupă, an orphan brought up by an army unit.[5][12]
  3. a son or daughter;[5][12] copil din flori, a child born out of wedlock.[5][12]
  4. (figurative) a naive, inexperienced person.[5]
  5. (obsolete and regional) a bastard.[3][2]

Word family

  • copilandră
  • copilandru
  • copilaș
  • copilă
  • copilăresc
  • copilărește
  • copilări
  • copilărie
  • copilăros
  • copileț
  • copili
  • Aromanian cochil
  • Albanian kopil

Usage notes

DEX has a separate entry cópil (plural copili), which it compares with this word: a side shoot growing from the base of a plant, such as maize or the vine, and a wooden or iron pin of a hinge or latch.[5][12] A da în mintea copiilor is said of old people who lose their judgement.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. copil
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. copil
  4. ^ a b c d e Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. copil
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 234
  6. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 2, 613
  7. ^ a b c Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. cópil
  8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 303
  9. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 77
  10. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. copil
  11. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 345
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 504
Cite this entry

“Copil.” Etymologically, 11 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/copil. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

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