doamnă

Forms

doamnă f (plural doamne)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin domna, the syncopated form of Latin domina (“mistress of a household”), the feminine of dominus (“master”).^[2][3][4][1] The short form ⟨domna⟩ already appears in Latin inscriptions.^[5] Ciorănescu considers this source beyond doubt, and DELR counts the word among those shared by all Romance languages.^[3][2]

The word survives in Aromanian doamnã, which the Fărșeroți pronounce ⟨doámă⟩.^[6] Its Romance cognates include Italian donna, French dame, Occitan domna, Catalan dona, Spanish dueña and Portuguese dona.^[7][8] The masculine is domn, and damă, a loan from French, is a doublet.^[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a charter of 1462 that Tiktin quotes; the word was then the title of the wife of a ruling prince.^[9][4] DELR's first Romanian text is the Hurmuzaki Psalter of about 1500.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the old principalities doamnă was the title of a reigning prince's wife (Doamna Ruxandra, doamna lui Vodă), and the chronicles use it in that sense.^[9][3] It also meant the mistress of a household.^[2][10]

In modern Romanian it became the general polite word for a woman, used in address (doamnelor și domnilor “ladies and gentlemen”) and before a name.^[9][3] Tiktin notes that cocoană and damă were used for this earlier, and Scriban that servants called their mistress cocoană, while in Transylvania they said doamnă.^[9][8] Plant names use the word too: doamnă-mare and doamna-codrului are belladonna.^[10][9]

Timeline

• 1462 – first record, in a charter.^[9][4]
• c. 1500 – first Romanian text, the Hurmuzaki Psalter.^[2]
• 1551–1558 – the plural doamnelor in the Voroneț Psalter.^[11]
• 1660 – the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use doamnă to gloss the name Mary.^[12]
• 1688 – doamnă in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. Lady, madam: the polite term for a (married) woman;^[10][1] doamnă de onoare “lady-in-waiting”.^[10][1]
2. A wife.^[10][4]
3. (historical) The wife of a ruling prince of Wallachia or Moldavia, or of a boyar.^[10][1]
4. The mistress of a house or household.^[10][1]
5. (botany, popular) In doamnă-mare and doamna-codrului: belladonna.^[10][4]

Word family

• domnișoară

Related words

• damă
• Aromanian doamnã
• Latin domina

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. domn
3. ^ 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. domn
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 737
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 410
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2733
8. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 437
9. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. doamnă
10. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 324
11. ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 122:3
12. ^ 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. doamnă
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. 2 John 1:5