The Etymology of Carrago: Germanic or Latin?

Title
The Etymology of Carrago: Germanic or Latin?
Publication Date
2025-07
Author(s)
Barnes, Cameron
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9756-0439
Email: cbarnes@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:cbarnes
Abstract
N/A
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Place of publication
United States of America
DOI
10.1086/735857
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/71200
Abstract

This article looks at the current near consensus that the Latin carrago is a loan from Gothic, as Ammianus Marcellinus (31.7.1) asserts. Although Friedrich Kluge long ago put forward a possible Germanic etymology, carrago is probably not Gothic in origin. For a putative loan from Eastern Germanic, the term looks remarkably like a typical member of a family of common nouns in Latin based on the carrus- stem. Skepticism regarding Ammianus’ Gothic etymology is entirely reasonable. Both Greek and Roman writers sometimes erred when assigning foreign origins to Latin words. Moreover, it is possible that his identification of the word as Gothic was a deliberate fiction, intended for literary effect..

Link
Citation
Classical Philology, 120(3), p. 415-426
ISSN
1546-072X
0009-837X
Start page
415
End page
426

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