All good points, Gavin. While my original question wasn't intended to create this flurry of interest, in light of Anne's other response showing the old English derivation, I think I'll toss this one at a good friend who is in the middle of an academic study (in association with scholars from the University of St. Andrews) of the Flemish immigration and influence in Scotland. Maybe its somewhere in his database. Thank you. - wally - On 3/20/2013 8:27 AM, Gavin Bell wrote: > On 20/03/2013 11:55, Wallace Fullerton wrote: >> Thank you, Anne. >> >> I didn't expect so complex a definition. John Cable responded also, >> giving the meaning as "weaver" - that might also fit into your more >> expansive definition since many from the Low Countries were, in fact, >> weavers. And I just looked up the derivation of the name "Webster" >> and find that it also comes from the Flemish and relates to weaving. >> Most intriguing, these little factoids. > > I would be a little hesitant in claiming that the Scots term > webster/wabster/wobster "comes from" the Flemish. The modern Dutch for > "weaver" is "wever", which (allowing for standard consonant shifts) is > equivalent to modern German "Weber", and quite distinct, phonetically > and etymologically, from "webster". I don't have dictionaries of > mediaeval Dutch/Flemish/Low German to hand, but even if some form > resembling "webster" had been current in the Low Countries in the Middle > Ages, it does not follow that we Scots were so linguistically > impoverished that we had to borrow the term. > > That's a bit like saying "my cousin and I both have red hair - he must > have inherited it from me". If my cousin and I share a physical > characteristic, then neither of us can have inherited it from the other, > because there is no genetic pathway between us. But we might both have > inherited it from our shared grandfather, and similar mechanisms operate > in families of languages. > > There were influxes of peoples from the Low Countries, but how can you > be sure that the term was not current in Scots before the Flemish > arrival? You don't say where you looked up the derivation of "webster", > but the "Shorter Scots Dictionary" records the term in various parts of > Scotland, and notes that, while now obsolete, the form is also known > from older forms of English. So while we can say with some certainty > that "webster" etc is of West Germanic origin, tying it down more > precisely would require a deeper knowledge that I possess of the various > strands of Mediaeval West Germanic - and I do hold a degree in Germanic > Philology! > > > Gavin Bell > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ANGUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >