An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Garten

by Friedrich Kluge

Garten, masculine, from the equivalent Middle High German garte, Old High German garto, masculine, ‘garden’; corresponding to Old Saxon gardo, Old Frisian garda, masculine, ‘garden’; Gothic garda, masculine, ‘stable.’ Akin to the strong nouns — Gothic gards, masculine, ‘court, house, family’; Old Icelandic garðr, masculine, ‘enclosure, hedge, house, farm,’ Old High German gart, masculine, ‘circle, choral dance,’ Anglo-Saxon geard (English yard), ‘enclosure, garden’ (English garden was borrowed in Middle English from Old French gardin, jardin, which is of German origin). ‘Enclosing,’ and ‘the enclosed space’ are the fundamental ideas of the whole class, which might thus be connected with gürten, Teutonic root gerd, if the correspondences in the cognate languages did not prove that ‘Garten’ is a pre-Teutonic, perhaps a common West Aryan form, which cannot belong to a specifically Teutonic root. But High German Garten is most closely connected with Latin hortus, ‘garden,’ Greek χόρτος, ‘enclosure, yard, farmyard, pasture, hay, grass,’ Old Irish gort, ‘cornfield,’ also Latin co-hors, -tis, feminine, ‘courtyard for cattle and fowls’; if the Teutonic word is allied to these, the d of the Gothic and Saxon words is derived from Aryan t, i.e. Gothic garda is based on Aryan ghortó- (not ghórto- from χόρτο-). On the other hand, Garten may be connected with Slavonic and Lithuanian words, which, however, assume that Gothic and Saxon d originated in Aryan dh; OSluv. gradŭ, masculine, ‘enclosure, citadel, town’ (as an enclosed place; Lithuanian gàrdas, ‘fold’). It is possible that in the Teutonic class two words, different in sound but allied in meaning, have been combined; but the Slavonic words were more probably borrowed from Teutonic. Compare Zaun.