An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Pfalz
Pfalz, feminine, ‘palace, high official residence, palatinate,’ from Middle High German pfalz, pfalze, phalenze, feminine, ‘residence of a spiritual or temporal prince, palatinate, town-hall,’ Old High German pfalanza, pfalinza, feminine; corresponding to Old Saxon palinza, palencea (used in the Heliand of the palace of Pilate). The current view is content with the assumption that the word is based on Latin pălâtium, yet the relation of the one to the other is more difficult to determine than is generally imagined. As the permutation of Low German p to High German pf indicates, the word must have been naturalised in German as early as the beginning of the 8th century; in the age of Charlemagne it already existed in German. Besides, the nasal of the Old Saxon and Old High German derivative, which was retained down to Middle High German even, cannot be explained by the form of Latin palatium, nor can we discover why it was inserted. Old High German pfalanza and Old Saxon palinza clearly point to Middle Latin palantium, ‘murus, fastigium,’ palenca, palencum, palitium, ‘contextus ac series palorum’; we are thus led to ‘the fortress,’ or, more accurately, ‘the district enclosed by pales,’ as the originally sense of the word Pfalz. When, at a later period, under the Carlovingians, palatia were built in Germany, the word, which had been adopted long previously from the Latin, acquired the meaning of the similarly sounding palatium. In later Middle Latin appears also palantia for palatinatus, ‘the district of a count palatine.’