Is it known if there was some weird flipping of [Ei (egg in German) and eye] with [Auge(eye in German) and egg] that happened historically or do you think the apparent similarities are coincidence?
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5Also, partly because eyes do look a bit like eggs.– Richard PetersonCommented Nov 16, 2014 at 12:43
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4When a merchant from the north of England wants to buy eggs from a woman in the south of England, he "axyed for eggys," and she thought he was speaking French. When finally another in the store mentioned "eyren," all made sense. I have not been able to account for exactly how the g showed up. directdutch.com/2014/04/word-of-the-day-ei-egg– Daniel BriggsCommented Nov 17, 2014 at 7:37
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6 Answers
New High German (NHG) Auge and English eye are believed to descend from Proto-Germanic *augan- and Proto-Indo-European *ōkū-.
NHG Ei and English egg are from PG *ajjam- and PIE *ōiom.
These words are not related. The homophony of modern English eye with modern German Ei is accidental. There is no “weird flipping".
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12It may be worth mentioning that English had ey until relatively recently, and that egg is a cognate borrowed from the Norse branch. It explains some of the inconsistency. Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 6:56
Notice the consistent phonetic correspondence between the English -(e)y- and the German -(i)g- or -(i)ch-:
- honey - Honig,
- yester(day) - gestern,
- day - Tag,
- eye - Auge,
- etc.
The reason for this is the palatalization of -g- in certain Germanic dialects, like English. The same English -y- is also the equivalent of the German -j- or -ie- (as in year - Jahr, etc). Hope this helps!
Egg and Ei (pronounced eye), just like the other pairs above, are forms of the same word. Unlike the others, though, all of which are native to English and derive from an initial Germanic g-form, this one is inherited directly from the Nordic egg, and its original form is actually in y (we know this because otherwise we'd expect Latin ocum instead of ovum, for instance). Apparently, Nordics not only kept the original Germanic k and g intact, but sometimes even legitimate Germanic y became k or g (possibly a hypercorrective tendency).
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1It was not that the
-ggot palatalised in German dialects (Bavarian has a hard [k] there), but that it palatalised in English. Commented Nov 17, 2014 at 13:39 -
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2@A.M.Bittlingmayer: Egg and Ei (pronounced eye), just like the other pairs above, are forms of the same word. Unlike the others, though, all of which are native to English and derive from an initial Germanic g-form, this one is inherited directly from the Nordic egg, and its original form is actually in y (we know this because otherwise we'd expect Latin ocum instead of ovum, for instance). Apparently, Nordics not only kept the original Germanic k and g intact, but sometimes even legitimate Germanic y became k or g (possibly a hypercorrective tendency).– LucianCommented Jan 30, 2016 at 11:49
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2You needn't tell me, I am just saying that a satisfactory answer must contain some explanation of the word egg. Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 17:21
Here are the entries from DWDS:
Ei n. aus Schale, Eiweiß und Eigelb bestehendes Hühner-, Vogelei, ahd. (8. Jh.), mhd. asächs. mnl. nl. ei, mnd. ey, aengl. ǣg (engl. egg aus dem Anord.), anord. egg, schwed. ägg führen auf germ. *ajjam bzw. (wegen des r- Plurals im Aengl. und im Hd.) auf *ajjaz. Der anlautende Vokal kann auf eine schwundstufige Form (ie. ə) zurückgehen oder Kürzung des im Germ. zu ā gewordenen ie. ō sein, das sich in den Formen verwandter Sprachen findet, griech. ōón (ᾠόν), lat. ōvum, kymr. wy, aslaw. ajьce, russ. jajcó (яйцо). Als Ausgangsformen können für diese Sprachen im wesentlichen ie. *ōu̯i̯om, daraus gekürztes *ōi̯om, und wohl auch *ōu̯om angesetzt werden. Zweifellos besteht eine Verbindung zu ie. *əu̯ei- (oder *au̯(e)i- ?), *u̯(e)i- ‘Vogel’ in aind. vḗḥ, vī́ḥ, lat. avis ‘Vogel’, wahrscheinlich auch griech. aietós (αἰετός) ‘Adler’. Je nach Beurteilung des Ablautverhältnisses im Rahmen der ie. Wortbildung wäre danach Ei ursprünglich ‘das zum Vogel Gehörige’ oder der Vogel das ‘Eiertier’. Anders SCHINDLER in: Die Sprache 15 (1969) 166, der für seinen Ansatz ie. *ō-ə̯ui̯-óm ‘Ei’, eigentl. ‘das beim Vogel Befindliche’, von einer präpositionalen Verbindung (mit ie. *ō ‘nahe bei’, s. Ohnmacht) ausgeht. Schon früh wird ‘Vogelei’ auf die Eier anderer Tiere (Insekten, Reptilien, Fische) sowie allgemein auf die weibliche Keimzelle übertragen. –
and this:
Auge n. Organ des Gesichtssinnes. Ahd. ouga (8. Jh.), mhd. ouge stimmt mit asächs. ōga, mnd. ōge, mnl. ōghe, nl. oog, aengl. ēage, (angl.) ēge, engl. eye, anord. auga, schwed. öga, dän. øje, got. augō überein. Die Herleitung von germ. *augan- aus ie. *okū- ‘sehen, Auge’, das sich aus aind. ákṣi, griech. ómma (ὄμμα), Dual ósse (ὄσσε), lat. oculus (s. Okular), aslaw. oko, russ. (älter) óko (око), lit. akìs ‘Auge’ erschließen läßt, ist durch die germ. Lautgestalt erschwert, wird aber doch für wahrscheinlich gehalten. Allgemein nimmt man an, daß der Vokal eines regulär entwickelten germ. *agw- (dieses z. B. noch in ahd. awizoraht ‘augenscheinlich’, um 800, acsiunī ‘äußere Erscheinung’, 9. Jh.) unter dem Einfluß von germ. *auzan- ‘Ohr’, vgl. ahd. ōra und (mit grammatischem Wechsel) got. ausō (s. Ohr), umgebildet wurde. Vielleicht hat dabei auch Ausgleich zwischen verschiedenen Flexionsformen eine Rolle gespielt; vgl. FEIST 364. –
Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed language, not an attested language. The issue here is not the precise reconstruction of long-lost sounds, but merely the observation that “eye” and “Ei” are not related etymologically.
(By the way, Beekes reconstructs IE *h₂ōui-o for “egg” and *h₃ekw for “eye”.)
This is a synthesis of a few other answers, since I haven't seen any that cover all of the details (and in particular how we ended up with "egg").
As Lucian says (in his excellent and detailed answer), /g/ in German often corresponds to /j/ in English, particularly next to a front vowel (/i/ or /e/). This is why the 'g' in Auge corresponds to the 'y' in eye.
However, "egg" isn't an inherited Germanic word. English is an interesting case because it mixes lots of words from different languages together. In most cases, when you see a 'g' next to an 'i' or 'e' in English, it was borrowed from somewhere else—even for such common words as give, borrowed from Norse (and displacing the inherited yive)!
"Egg" also comes from the Norse side of the Germanic family tree, which kept 'g' next to 'e' (and sometimes even stuck it in where it didn't used to be), and for a while it co-existed with the inherited word. William Caxton, the first person to use a printing press for English, complained about that word in particular:
And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understood hym we.
What sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren, certaynly it is harde to playse every man.
(Modernized:)
And in particular [the merchant] asked for "eggys". But the good wife answered that she couldn't speak French. And the merchant was angry, for he couldn't speak French either, but wanted "egges", and she didn't understand him. And then at last another person said he wanted "eyren". Then the good wife said that she understood him well.
So what should a man write these days, "egges" or "eyren"? Certainly, it's hard to please everyone!
Once again, the inherited word has a 'y'! The -ren is a plural marker, like in "child-ren"; the singular was ey, which looks very much like the German. But "egges" won out—due to Caxton's printing, partially—and "eyren" faded into oblivion.
(It's also possible that "egg" won because "ey" and "eye" were too similar, and that got confusing! See for example how "ink pen" is displacing "pen" in American dialects that merge "pin" with "pen". But that's speculation, nothing more.)
So as others have said, the similarity of these words is a complete coincidence. If they're related, it's farther back than we can reconstruct, back before Proto-Indo-European.
answered Jan 17, 2019 at 18:18
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1This is probably the answer the Q was looking for. A light explanation. However, for a technical remark on your notion that "egg" was not inherited. As far as I can tell there exists a significant population that inherited the word in an unbroken chain from parent to child. Your quote shows that the competition caused a difficult process. I'm not sure the technical terminology is sufficient to capture the details of reality. Likewise, the "complete coincidence" of Linguists must be interpreted as "fifty fifty chance, we really don't know" or at best "there's no good reason to think so".– vectoryCommented Jan 19, 2019 at 15:45
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1@vectory Oh yeah, to clarify, I mean "not inherited" in the sense that it wasn't an unbroken chain from PGmc to OE to MidE to ModE. Certainly it was inherited from parent to child all the way through there, it just came from a non-English source in the first place.– Draconis ♦Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 15:50
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2@vectory The complete coincidence, though, doesn't mean a 50-50 chance. It just means we don't know enough to give any sort of reliable answer on it. Doesn't mean the odds are 50-50, but means we can't say with any sort of certainty either way.– Draconis ♦Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 15:52
No, egg comes from something like PIE a̯ōu̯iom "egg" (some speculate, from the word for bird).
The eye comes from PIE o̯oq̆u "eye".
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7Whose reconstructions? I don't recognize the q with breve. Commented Nov 16, 2014 at 21:17
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6I can't make sense of what transcription system you use. Commented Nov 17, 2014 at 13:40
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2Anixx frequently posts here, with this PIE transciption that I've never seen anywhere else. Commented Dec 18, 2017 at 11:42
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1Weird thought: How does o̯oq̆u "eye" compare to hawk and hawkeye? The reconstruction is PIE *kopuǵos, which except for the *p would be a reasonable match for your "eye". Wiktionary mentions a suggested *keh2p "to seize" (which probably figures with bird of prey, one that "seize" prey). Eggs are commonly caught, not kept. Make of that what you will, the point is, a superficial reconstruction of the youngest PIE layer does not suffice to exclude a genetic relation, though in contrast proving it would be exceedingly difficult. Eggs and eyes compare in shape and color in various ways.– vectoryCommented Jan 17, 2019 at 1:51
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1@vectory very stretched ideas, i do not find them interesting.– AnixxCommented Jan 17, 2019 at 11:00
The question cannot be answered beyond reasonable doubt. The two words egg and eye have different roots, as far as we can see, but we cannot see indefinitely far back.
#overview
The derivation for egg can be found in wiktionary as from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ōwyóm "egg", what @Anixx gives as *a̯ōu̯iom and @fdb as *ōiom. The wiktionary entry is well sourced at least. It notes that the reconstruction does not account well for all forms, and relates the theory that it derives from *h₂éwis "bird", perhaps from *h₂ew-.
*h₂ew-, derives quite different senses, importantly "to perceive, see, to be aware of" (deriving e.g. *ear* via *h₂ṓws, audio via *h₂ewis-dʰh₁-, Sanskr avis "before the eyes, openly, manifestly, evidently"). Therefore, the relation between eyes and eggs has to be reconsidered.
For eye on the other hand I don't have that much to say. In wiktionary it's derived from *h₃ekʷ-. The state of the art doesn't know a comparison between *h₃ekʷ- and *h₂ew-.
Interpretation
Eggs and eyes compare well at least in shape and color. Another sense given for *h₂ew- is "to dress, clothe", which (is not sourced, but) might be comparable to *(s)kewH- "to cover"; What I'm getting at is the egg-shell, of course, which is reasonable if Ger. Schale appears in sich in Schale werfen "to dress fine", and if the Proto-Germanic root *skal glossed "testicles" is to be believed--eggs is a euphemism for the nuts in many languages. In general, egg is a figurative name for things bearing creation (the female ova, the philosopher's egg?). I did at first assume that *h₂ōwyóm in fact meant "chicken egg", but I have no clue where *-yóm alone came from. Even if it was in fact a productive suffix, I would consider that the suffix had to come from somewhere. I suppose that *-yom relates to *oyn- "1", perhaps as clitic pronoun. But I also think oinkology rather refers to pigs oink oink (´・(oo)・｀) so ymmv
coming up empty for derivation and phonology
There is no conusion, simply because the comparative method can only reconstruct the latest form of PIE to the exclusion of irregular developments and thus to the exclusion of spurious substrata and early adstrata, which have to be expected however for aggriculture and pastoralism.
The superficial similarities in the notation are less pronounced if opting for @fdb's and @Anixx's preferred forms, anyhow.
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2it would be nice if the downvoters would leave a comment, as per the guidelines. As far as I can see my answer is generally in line with the up-voted answers, except for the verdict that they have no shimmer of pre-PIE.– vectoryCommented Jan 19, 2019 at 15:52
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1It's probably been downvoted because there's a lot of speculation, and some statements that betray a lack of understanding of the inflectional system of old IE languages. For example, you are flummoxed by the endings "-on" and "-um", but those are just the usual nom/acc endings in Greek and Latin and not suffixes of any kind.– sirideCommented Aug 27, 2020 at 2:44
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@siride right, so I removed that part, thanks. However, I'm not sure if I betrayed understanding. I remained agnostic: I just don't deny uncertainty about the reconstruction of inflectional endings to the exclusion of internal derivation from a suffix--which should be clearer now. I had to remove further speculation, because I couldn't lead it to any form of conclusion--which is kind of opposite to the goal of showing that speculation based on moderately reasonable premisses can be fruitful. I don't have reasonably strong premisses--so, back to the drawing board!– vectoryCommented Aug 27, 2020 at 13:40