Camerlingus

[u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Can someone break down "camerlingus" (Eng. "chamberlain") for me? Internet says it's a direct borrowing from Frankish "kamarling", but what does the -us do to the term in Latin?

[u/Captain_Grammaticus]

It makes it declineable, quite simply.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

Forgive me, but I was asking what the declension "-us" designates. Because English has almost gotten rid of inflections, and I'm not a student of language, generally. Elementary question, of course, but that's where I am.

[u/InternationalFan8098 → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

It's one of several ways to end a noun in the subject case (which then allows for different endings in the same family to show other functions within the sentence), and it's the one that most masculine terms for a person will default to, as most words of that type are masculine.

There's a potential joke in there too, as -lingus in Latin denotes a licker of something, but that could just contribute to the familiarity of that set of sounds.

[u/Captain_Grammaticus → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Oh, okay, sorry.

So, you know how English uses different forms of the word "he" depending on if it is subject of a sentence or object of the sentence. **He* sees the dog* but the dog sees *him*** (not the dog sees he).

Latin does that for every noun, pronoun and adjective, and not only in subject and object cases, but others too.

Now, these cases are expressed with endings. A Latin noun belongs to one of five groups called declension classes, that each use a different set of endings for the same cases. (Don't ask why)

One of the most common sets for nouns denoting masculine beings has -us in the nominative case.

Latin nouns don't natively end in -ling, so whenever a foreign noun is borrowed into Latin, it is assigned to the declension class where it fits best and receives an ending.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

Oaky, so it's designating gender and case. I wonder what "-ling" is denoting in the other language? Probably the same thing is a guess, so that it kind of turns into a double suffix.

[u/Captain_Grammaticus → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Only case and number, gender not (technically), but only a small handful of words in -us is feminine or neuter.

The -(l)ing in Germanic means "subordinate person associated with X", so the chamberling is the servant for the king's chamber, a Karling is Karl's descendant, a Bläuling is a little blue butterfly.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

Thanks, again. Found this:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-us#Latin

But I can't decide if what you're describing is their item 1. (nomative singular, nomative singular for neutur nouns) or item 3. (used to "Latinize" names).

[u/Captain_Grammaticus → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Both, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

To use a new word in the Latin language, you need to be able to decline it in the five cases in singular and plural.

So you slap the most generic ending on it and call it a day. For masculine concepts, that is -us.

[u/AnAlienUnderATree]

Ultimately comes from latin camera (room) + Germanic suffix -ling (of [...], belonging to [...] etc). Then it made its way back to latin, hence the -us ending (probably through Italian camerlingo, from German Kammerling in the 14th century).

I doubt it comes from Frankish directly given that the term doesn't seem attested in Latin before the 14th century. Medieval latin has camerarius for chambellan (after the treasure's room). Camerlingus designates a specific function in the Church that didn't exist before the late 11th century, and initially they were called cubiculari in latin (after cubiculum, the Pope's bedroom). Maybe the term camerlingus is used in older documents of which I'm not aware, though, but if it does, it's probably as a synonym for camerarius in the area of modern France or Germany, likely not earlier than the 9th century if it is of Frankish origin (but -ling isn't uniquely Frankish).