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Re: Boy and Girl in Romance Languages

Here are a few more etymologies, including obsolete terms:

Rum f&#259;t, fat&#259; < fetus 'offspring'
Sp chaborra < L. clava 'sprout'
Gallo-It. matto/a < Gmc magat (cf. magd)
Sp, Pt menino/a, Cat minyo, Fr mignon, mignot < Celtic min 'little'
It pulcella, OPt, Occ pucella, OSp puncella, Fr pucelle, puceau < L
pullus 'young animal'

On the use of 'baby talk', compare
It ninno/a, nanna 'baby' Sp niño/a with It ninare 'lull' and Sp nana
'nurse'
and
It bambino/a, Asturian bams with Sp bamba 'swing' and Gk bambain&#333; 'lisp'

It seems very common for the word for 'boy' to come from one for
servant: Gaelic has 'buachaill' which was originally 'cowherd'.
Foreign loans are also common in the search of novelty: 'garçon' went
into Gaelic as 'garsún' in Munster and 'gasur' (I may have spelt that
wrong) in Ulster.

I must admit that I've chickened out of creating these words for
Liburnes: these postings have inspired me to settle the matter!

David