Talk:Haberdasher/Archives/2019

Latest comment: 4 years ago by Florian Blaschke in topic No connection to Old Norse?

Merge with Galanteriewaren

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1491689 is IMHO the same thing except in non-English languages (e.g., de:Galanteriewaren. These two Wikidata items should be merged.

Ceplm (talk) 15:09, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


I disagree. The haberdasher is the same as the German "Kurzwarenhändler", who sells the same items as the haberdasher. "Galanteriewaren" are a different category, they contain stuff like costume jewellery, scarfs and other accessories. Please remove the link to Galanteriewaren and link to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurzwaren instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grinsekatze68 (talkcontribs) 08:19, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's just what I thought when I came here. A haberdasher is a "Kurzwarenhändler" in German; there is (currently) no specific article for the merchant, so this article should indeed link to "Kurzwaren". Red (talk) 08:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

No connection to Old Norse?

I don't think we can say that the word has no connection to Old Norse, and then claim it came from an Anglo-Norman word (emphasis on the post-hyphen portion...). Especially so when the meanings seem so blatantly shared. I reckon that the word very much existed in Old Norse, perhaps back in Proto-Norse, and was brought to Normandy by the Norman invaders/settlers. From there, with William, it crossed the Channel and worked its way into Middle English, and then down to the modern version of the language.

The precise meaning and origin of hapertas is not known, though. It seems to be from a Germanic language, judging by the h-, but there's no guarantee at all that it comes from Old Norse; it could also originate in West Germanic, for example. In fact, it's even possible that hapertas itself goes back to English haberdasher (or haberdash, which may be a back-formation; compare here), so that it would be a dead-end. (By using the search term anglo-norman "hapertas", I was able to come up with citations from the OED and other etymological dictionaries which confirm the obscurity of the relationship between these words.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:52, 24 September 2019 (UTC)