Talk:Ewa ad Amorem

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@Vlaemink: Did you read my edit summaries? I think you are mistaken: Green distinguish OHG êwa from OS êo and calls the former a technical term in the legal Latin of the time - the dictionary you cite gives the earliest attestation of Dutch ewa in the 10th-century Wachtendonck Psalms and its the German term, not the English that counts here. In other words, its the High German term that counts here. Probably because a High German dialect was the "Frankish" language of the court. Terms like karolingischen Stammesrechte, Volksrecht and Königsrecht are direct borrowings from German scholarship, so I see no need to omit them. Srnec (talk) 17:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

This concerns two separate issues. The least technical one, is the unnecessary use of German terms in the English-language Wikipedia, for which accepted and perfectly applicable English translations exist. Carolingian tribal law, popular law and royal law are perfectly apt and to be preferred to (for English-speakers) oblique German terms, which are then subsequently translated between brackets anyway.

As for the text, the title (though its somewhat anachronistic to use that term) is Notitia vel commemoratio de illa euua quae se ad Amorem habet and it is part of law code dated to the 9th century. It is not a Old High German text, it is a Latin text containing a very small amount of undetermined Germanic words, ewa, being first and foremost among them. The only German the text contains, is a very early Middle High German word gezunfti (to explain the earlier ewa) for contemporary readers in the 10th or 11th century. As it is unknown, and mostly likely remain so, to which specific Germanic subgrouping the original ewa can be attributed, it's far more prudent to give a general Germanic etymology (i.e. Proto-Germanic *aiwō) rather than assume, unsupported by any conclusive evidence, that it's Old High German. Vlaemink (talk) 14:35, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I know of no English source that uses the term "Carolingian tribal law". Do you?

You say that "it is unknown, and mostly likely [will] remain so, to which specific Germanic subgrouping the original ewa can be attributed", but we have a source that attributes it. And it gives an explanation, which is in the article and which you have now prefaced with "within the context of the codex it". Why do you think that a Carolingian Latin legal text cannot use an OHG word even if it applied to a non-OHG-speaking region? I might be tempted to agree with you but for the fact that the source gives OLG as eo. Srnec (talk) 22:27, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I do not contest the possibility of ewa being Old High German, I contest it being explicitly or implicitly posed as such. As the word could also be Old Dutch (euua) or Old Saxon (ewa) (link) a general Germanic description it to be preferred. As for the unnecessary use of German terms, I know of only one source that uses karolingischen Stammesrechte within the context of an English article, a single article published in the multilingual (Dutch, English, German) journal Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik. Which in its turn references only one 1963 German book, which used this terminology as a pars pro toto for 4 tribal legal codices, the Ewa ad Amorem being one of them. That can hardly be called evidence of the supposed widespread use in Anglophone historiography of this German term. Instead, there a countless of English publications on Carolingian law codes, which use variations of tribal or common law codes to describe codices; which obviously preferable to an unnecessarily oblique term found in a singular publication which assumes its readers have knowledge of English, Dutch and German in a way that Wikipedia of course can not and should not do. Vlaemink (talk) 14:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Since we have RS that explicitly pose ewa as OHG, I'm not sure why your concern matters. You are entitled to your opinion, but ignoring RS in favour of it is OR. Srnec (talk) 17:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)