30 Nov /16

Family

Family - Word of the day - EVS Translations
Family – Word of the day – EVS Translations

Christmas season is the time of the year to place the family in the centre of all celebrations. Yeah, it is not the excitement of the presents, but the pleasure of coming together as a family and honouring family traditions. And every family has its own way of celebrating, whether decorating together the Christmas tree, singing carols, baking cooking or sitting together for long festive meals, most Christmas activities are, indeed, designed to be shared with those we love.

The concept of family, as group of people affiliated by blood or affine tights, exists ever since  prehistoric times, but the very word family is a fairly new addition to our vocabulary.

The word derives from the Latin familia, used to collectively name a household, and in particular to refer to household servants, as the root of the word indicates, famulus ‘servant, slave.’ While the term for ‘parents with children’ was domus, with the literal meaning of ‘home’, from which we get our word domestic.

The word family entered the English language with its initial meaning circa 14th century.

Until that time, the Old English word for the members of a household was hiwan or hewan, deriving from Old Germanic and first recorded in print circa 1000 in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The word family expanded to the meaning of the entourage of a person of high rank from the  beginning of the 15th century and was firstly used in reference to the entourage of the King of England Henry VI in 1548, in Edward Hall’ Chronicle: “The King, the Queen with all their family, shortly followed.”

The sense of the word family as a ‘collective body of persons who form one household under one head and one domestic government, including parents, children, and servants’ is first attested in use circa 1550s. And by mid-17th century the word came to specifically describe ‘parents with their children.’

Around the same time the term also developed the meaning of any group of things connected by common features.

The compound family member is first recorded in use in 1673, in Richard Baxter’s A Christian directory, and family house followed half a century later, in Thomas Wotton’s The English Baronetage.

And when comes to Christmas and family, it is not the etymology of the word or the blood bond that brings us all up together, but the enjoyment of gifting our relatives with happy moments, which reflect back at us and enlighten the festive times.