Hungarian Historical Phonology nép

nép 'zu einer Stätte, Institution, Person gehörige Gemeinschaft; Volk; Leute; Menge; gemeines Volk, haupts Bauernvolk; Tiergruppe'

First attestation/Old Hungarian data

1177 nepe

See EWUng: 1025, s.v. nép

Important dialectal forms

níp

Helimski (2002)

Uralic/Pre-Hungarian reconstruction

?

Loan etymology

Hu ← Iranian (Helimski 2002)

Cognates suggested in earlier research

[coming]

Commentary

The word nép is of unclear origin. Both an Iranian etymology and an explanation as an original compound have been suggested. The latter is supported by EWUng: it is argued that the word could be a compound of the Uralic words for 'woman' (* ? näji) and 'boy, son' (*pojka). The original meaning would have been 'belonging to the community of men and women'. The explanation is highly uncertain, and there is nothing in the word that would clearly point to a compound.

The Iranian etymology stems from Abaev and has been supported by Helimski (2002): according to them, Hu nép stems from an Alanic cognate of Avestan nāfa-, Old Persian *nāfa- 'family' (the Old Persian word has an uncertain meaning as it is only attested in the compound nāmanāfa- 'Namenangabe'; see Schmitt 2014: 218-219). According to Abaev and Helimski, the Alanic word is possibly retained in the name of the Ossetic god Naf. Originally the Iranian word *nāfa- refered to both 'navel, hub' and 'family, kin' and it reflects the Indo-European word *h3nebh- 'navel, hub' (Schmitt 2014; EWAia II: 14).

As the meaning 'people, folk' can plausibly be derived from the meaning of 'family, kin', there are no semantic obstacles to the Iranian loan etymology. However, on the phonological level it is less certain how exactly nép could be derived from Iranian *nāfa-. The vocalism presents no problems, as é corresponding to Iranian *a is found in a number of early Iranian loans into Hungarian. The consonant p is more difficult to explain: single p has to reflect earlier *pp (if the word predates Proto-Hungarian), and it is not quite clear why *pp (rather than *p) would be the substitution of Iranian *f or earlier *bh; no parallels to this are known. On the other hand, if the loan is recent (belonging to the late layer of Alanic loans acquired before the Hungarian conquest), *p could be the substitution of Alanic f. It is unclear at which point of the history of Hungarian did the change *p > f take place. It is possible that even if the phoneme f already existed during the time of borrowing, it was not yet allowed in word-initial position (the change *p > f took place in Anlaut only).

We could then assume that the word was borrowed from Alanic *Naf(V) into Proto-Hungarian as *nepV.

Conclusion

[coming]

References

EWUng: 1025, s.v. nép: Compound, uncertain origin

Helimski 2002