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In recent days, the famous aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot, "Nessun dorma" (Italian: [nesˌsun ˈdɔrma]; English: "Let no one sleep"), has surfaced as part of a worldwide movement to encourage the Italian people in their struggle against the novel coronavirus (see here, here, and here). This article by Claudia Rosett gives the backstory:
"An Uplifting Moment, in the Time of Coronavirus", PJ Media (3/14/20)
This led me to ponder the origins of Turandot's name, especially since the operatic version of the story is set in China and she is alleged to be a Chinese princess. Right away, I was in for a jolt, since "The name of the opera is based on Turan-Dokht (daughter of Turan), which is a common name used in Persian poetry for Central Asian princesses." (source)
Digging deeper in the same source, we learn:
Turandot is a Persian word and name that means "daughter of Turan", Turan being a region of Central Asia, formerly part of the Persian Empire. The name of the opera is taken from Persian Turandokht (توراندخت), with dokht being a contraction of dokhtar (daughter); the kh and t are both pronounced.
…
The story of Turandot was taken from a Persian collection of stories called The Book of One Thousand and One Days (1722 French translation Les Mille et un jours by François Pétis de la Croix – not to be confused with its sister work The Book of One Thousand and One Nights) – where the character of "Turandokht" as a cold princess was found.
June Teufel Dreyer remarks:
This is fascinating. Have always assumed that “daughter” came from Nordic languages’ “dottir”; Töchter in German. So it came from Persian? Or they’re accidentally the same?
June is right. It turns out that English "daughter" does have a Germanic basis, but it also has close cognates in Iranian, Indic, Greek, Slavic, and other branches of Indo-European, all the way back to PIE *dhugheter, but was lost in Celtic and Romance.
Middle English doughter, from Old English dohtor "female child considered with reference to her parents," from Proto-Germanic *dokhter, earlier *dhutēr (source also of Old Saxon dohtar, Old Norse dóttir, Old Frisian and Dutch dochter, German Tochter, Gothic dauhtar), from PIE *dhugheter (source also of Sanskrit duhitar-, Avestan dugeda-, Armenian dustr, Old Church Slavonic dušti, Lithuanian duktė, Greek thygater). The common Indo-European word, lost in Celtic and Latin (Latin filia "daughter" is fem. of filius "son").
(Etymological Dictionary Online)
For the fuller filiation (!) of the PIE word, we have this richly informative Wiktionary entry:
Reconstruction
There are two PIE reconstructions that can be obtained using the comparative method:
-
- *dʰugh₂ter- on the basis of: PIIr. *dʰugHtar- (Sanskrit duhitár-, PIr. *dʰugʰtar- > *dʰugdʰar- > *dugdar- > Gathic Avestan dugədar-), Ancient Greek thugátēr-, Tocharian A ckācer, Tocharian B tkācer
- *dʰukter- on the basis of: Iranian *duxθrī (> Old Persian *duhçī) and *duxtar- (> New Persian duxtar) due to the absence of Bartholomae’s Law, possibly Gaulish duxtir, Gothic dáuhtar, Oscan fu-utreí (dative singular), Armenian dustr, Hieroglyphic Luwian t(u)watra/i-, Lycian kbatra-, Slavic *dъkti > *dъťi, Lithuanian duktė̃
The latter form is secondary, occurring due to the deletion of the medial laryngeal in the sequence CHCC in the oblique stem, which was paradigmatically leveled in the daughters. E.g. genitive singular *dʰugh₂tr̥és > *dʰuktr̥és. The CHCC > CCC change was a synchronic PIE phonological rule.
According to Kloekhorst, hieroglyphic Luwian tu(w)atra/i- and Lycian kbatra- reflect Proto-Luwic *duetr-, further reflecting Proto-Anatolian *duegtr- < PIE full-grade stem *dʰwegh₂ter-. The original inflection was thus hysterodynamic bandi-type as described by Beekes (1995: 175): *CéC-R, *CC-éR-m, *CC-R-ós:
-
- Nominative singular: *dʰwégh₂-tr̥
- Accusative singular: *dʰugh₂-tér-m̥
- Genitive singular: *dʰugh₂-tr-ós
After the split of Anatolian branch from Proto-Indo-European, the other Indo-European languages underwent a common innovation, replacing the nominative stem *dʰwégh₂tr̥ by the accusative stem in the zero-grade *dʰúgh₂tēr which however retained the original accentuation and which further underlies the attested Greek forms *θύγατηρ (Homeric θύγατρα (thúgatra)) > θυγάτηρ (thugátēr) (θυγατέρα, θυγατρός). In the other Indo-European languages the accentuation of the accusative was later on transferred to the nominative form, yielding the oxytonic paradigm listed in the declension table, as retained in Sanskrit (duhitā́, duhitáram, duhitúḥ) and Lithuanian (duktė̃, dùkterį, dukterès).
Etymology
The original meaning is probably "the (potential) suckler, the one that draws milk"; compare Sanskrit दुहे (duhé) / दुग्धे (dugdhe), and the *-tḗr suffix common to other r-stem kinship terms.
Noun
*dʰugh₂tḗr f
Inflection
| more ▼Athematic, hysterokinetic | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| singular | |||
| nominative | *dʰugh₂tḗr | ||
| genitive | *dʰugtrés | ||
Idioms
Descendants
-
- Anatolian: [Term?]
- Hittite: (duttariyatiyas, gen.sg.)
- Luwian: Cuneiform: (duttariyatis)Anatolian Hieroglyphs: (FILIAtú-wa-tar /tuwatar/, acc.sg.)
- Lycian: (kbatra)
- Armenian:
- Balto-Slavic: *duktḗ (see there for further descendants)
- Celtic: *duxtīr (see there for further descendants)
- Germanic: *duhtēr (see there for further descendants)
- Hellenic: *tʰúgatēr
- Indo-Iranian: *dʰugʰdʰā, *dʰuǰʰitr- (see there for further descendants)
- Italic: *fuɣtēr
- Tocharian: *täkā́cër
- Anatolian: [Term?]
Luciano Pavarotti sings "Nessun dorma" from Turandot (The Three Tenors in Concert 1994)
| Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa, nella tua fredda stanza, guardi le stelle che tremano d'amore, e di speranza! |
None shall sleep! None shall sleep! Not even you, oh Princess, in your cold bedroom, watching the stars that tremble with love, and with hope! |
| Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me; il nome mio nessun saprà! No, No! Sulla tua bocca, lo dirò quando la luce splenderà! |
But my secret is hidden within me; no one will know my name! No, no! On your mouth, I will say it when the light shines! |
| Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio che ti fa mia! |
And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine! |
Just before the climactic end of the aria, a chorus of women is heard singing in the distance:
| Il nome suo nessun saprà, E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir! |
No one will know his name, and we will have to, alas, die, die! |
Calaf, now certain of victory, sings:
| Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle! All'alba, vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò! |
Vanish, o night! Fade, you stars! Fade, you stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win! |
I've been mispronouncing her name my whole life. The correct pronunciation clearly has a "t" at the end (listen).
Reading
"Novel transmission of the novel coronavirus" (3/15/20) — has a long list of "Selected readings" at the end.
Addendum
The word for daughter in Irish is iníon, in Scots Gaelic is nighean, and in Welsh is merch.
The words for daughter in the major Romance languages are French fille, Italian figlia, Spanish hija, Portuguese filha, and Romanian fiică.
They derive from Latin filia. Interestingly, filia ("daughter") derives from Latin filius ("son"):
From Old Latin fīlius, fīlios, from Proto-Italic *feiljos (compare Faliscan hileo), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁ylios (“sucker”), a derivation from the verbal root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck”). Related to fēmina, fellō, fētus, Old English delu (“nipple, teat”), dēon (“to suck, suckle”), Old Armenian դալ (dal). Compare with the PIE derivation of "daughter" above.
With descendants in:
- Eastern Romance
- Gallo-Italic
- Italo-Dalmatian
- Old French: fil
- Old Occitan: filh
- Rhaeto-Romance
- Sardinian:
- Venetian: fio
- West Iberian
(source)
March 16, 2020 @ 3:57 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Etymology, Language and medicine, Language and music, Names
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