{"id":2069,"date":"2009-12-30T11:43:03","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T11:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=2069"},"modified":"2009-12-30T11:43:03","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T11:43:03","slug":"noel-genes-and-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=2069","title":{"rendered":"Noel, genes and genius"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When singing the Christmas carol <em>The First Noel<\/em> the other day I started wondering where the word noel comes from. I knew <em>no\u00ebl<\/em> was French for Christmas, but wasn&#8217;t sure where that came from. <\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?search=noel&#038;searchmode=none\">Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, noel comes from the Latin <em>natalis<\/em> (birth) via the Old French <em>noel<\/em> (the Christmas season), and the Middle English <em>nowel<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>Quite a few other words for Christmas probably come from the same root &#8211; <em>Natale<\/em> (Italian), <em>Navidad<\/em> (Spanish), <em>Natal<\/em> (Portuguese), <em>Nadal<\/em> (Catalan\/Galician\/Occitan\/Romansh), <em>Nadolig<\/em> (Welsh), <em>Nedeleg<\/em> (Breton), <em>Nadelik<\/em> (Cornish), <em>Nollaig<\/em> (Irish\/Scottish Gaelic), and <em>Nollick<\/em> (Manx).<\/p>\n<p><em>natalis<\/em> comes from <em>natus<\/em>, the past participle of <em>nasci<\/em> (to be born), which comes from the Old Latin gnasci (to be born), which is cognate with the Latin <em>genus<\/em> (race, stock, kind), and the Greek <em>\u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 [genos]<\/em> (race, kind) and <em>\u03b3\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 [gonos]<\/em> (birth, offspring, stock), the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root of which is <em>*gen-\/*gon-\/*gn-<\/em> (to produce, beget, be born).<\/p>\n<p>Other words derived from that PIE root include genius, gene, king and kin in English, <em>gentis<\/em> (Lithuanian &#8211; kinsman), <em>Kind<\/em> (German &#8211; child), <em>geni<\/em> (Welsh &#8211; to be born), and I&#8217;m sure there are plenty of others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When singing the Christmas carol The First Noel the other day I started wondering where the word noel comes from. I knew no\u00ebl was French for Christmas, but wasn&#8217;t sure where that came from. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, noel comes from the Latin natalis (birth) via the Old French noel (the Christmas season), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,116,118,10,15,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-german","category-greek","category-language","category-latin","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}