In English and Spanish, the words for welcome have an uncanny relation: the translation is almost completely (if not completely) literal.Bien means well and venidos means come/came in the plural or something along those lines. I looked up if it came from Latin (in English welcome), and it said that it didn’t. So, I am wondering if there is a reconstructed PIE phrase of invitation that translated as “(you’re) well, come” or something like that.
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12I don't know the details off the top of my head, but I suspect a calque rather than inheritance. (A "calque" is when a phrase is translated word-for-word into another language and becomes an idiom.)– Draconis ♦Jan 27, 2020 at 3:59
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1Just to further muddy the waters: in some variants in some Very High Alemannic dialects, the first part is wol or even göt (gut). And of course the general construction is similar in South Slavic, Turkish, Armenian, Persian...– Adam BittlingmayerJan 27, 2020 at 17:46
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2The rather surprising word-history of English "welcome" can be found here: oed.com/view/Entry/…– fdbJan 27, 2020 at 19:01
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3How on earth is this a "translation or identification" request, the reason stated for the close votes? Seriously, are people voting Close and selecting a reason at complete and utter whim? Sorry if this seems like an overreaction, but I'm going through the queue and it gets more ridiculous the more of them I review.– LjLFeb 4, 2020 at 18:16
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Also, the completely unrelated language Sami has the word "buresboahtin" for welcome and this also means "well come" in the same way as the English and Spanish words you have pointed out– Omar and LorraineFeb 20, 2021 at 19:26
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3 Answers
It seems that English welcome derives from wilcuma, where wil- seems to derives from proto-Germanic * wiljaną. On the other hand, Spanish bienvenido(s) (French bienvenue(s), Portuguese bem-vindo(s), ...) and similar expressions in other Romance language, are recent constructions, not attested in classical Latin. This seems to exclude a common origin of the English form and Romance forms.
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Recency does not exclude common origin. Probably a semantic loan. Jul 18, 2022 at 14:54
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The etymology of the two expressions goes back to different sources, but the conceptual link is somewhat similar. "Welcome" goes back to "will" and not to "well" (etymonline.com/word/welcome). So the semantic origin would be something along the lines of "your coming suits my will/wish". "Bienvenidos" and Romance cognates, instead, go back to Latin "bene" ('well'). There is no exhaustive explanation in the etymological dictionaries of Romance languages that I have consulted, but the semantics should be something like "I consider your coming good".
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will and well are themselves related, although it's unclear how long this connection remained clear in the minds of speakers– TristanOct 23, 2020 at 13:34
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@Tristan But "will" and "well" are completely unrelated to "bene", which means this phrase by definition cannot go back to PIE, which is the asker's question.– cmwNov 15, 2022 at 5:20
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@cmw sure, the main point of the answer is correct that the two phrases are not directly related. I was just addressing the 'goes back to "will" and not to "well"' which, whilst not wrong, glosses over the fact the two words are themselves connected. As I said, it's also unclear if the connection between "will" and "well" would have been clear at the stage when "welcome" was formed (likely no later than common West Germanic, as the phrase has descendants throughout the branch)– TristanNov 15, 2022 at 9:43
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1wiktionary suggests the Latin is a calque of the Frankish reflex (with this showing confusion between will & well after the medial -ja- was lost, something seen in most modern reflexes outside Germany), which can't be ruled out– TristanNov 15, 2022 at 9:46
Accepting that "wiktionary suggests the Latin is a calque of the Frankish reflex [...] which can't be ruled out" (@Tristan), the question is about the origin of welcome.
The reconstructed root of come is also found as exponent in Sanskrit (eg. अध्वगत् (adhvagat, “traveller”) अवगन्तोस् (ávagantos, “to descend; to approach; to visit; to obtain; to undertake”), en.wiktionary: गम्).
In general, zero-grade affixes from verb stems are a common indo-euopean word formation mechanism, like credo and hair do (which is to some extend coincidence). As a noun or adjective, a noun stem would remain unchanged with a thematic vowel added, though many different derivational suffixes exist (eg. perfective reduplication जगाम (jagā́ma) < *gʷegʷóme, en.wiktionary).
So, welcome is rather sugggestive of an older typus of word formation. However, as an interjection (Welcome!, Happy Birthday!), the context is so erroded, it is very unlikely to yield any significant evidence.
before 900; Middle English < Scandinavian; compare Old Norse velkominn, equivalent to velwell1 + kominncome (past participle); replacing Old English wilcuma one who is welcome, equivalent to wil- welcome (see will2) + cuma comer
Ideally, it should tell us something new about the root *gʷem- and its derivation.
