Ripuarian Franks - Etymology

Etymology

The anglicized name Ripuarian, from a Latin original, Ripuarii, with variants Ripaurii and Riparii, to a speaker or writer of Latin and any Germanic language is an obvious compound of Latin ripa, "bank," "river," and Latinized Germanic -uarii, to mean people from the Rhine according to Perry and others. The specific nuance, in this view, is "river-dwelling" and would be used to differentiate them from the Salian Franks (the Franks of the Sal, the IJs-sel River, or the Franks of the "salty sea").

Of the three possible etymological reactions, one is that the entire word was Germanic but was made into a mixture in the culture of educated Latin writers. Accordingly Ripuarii might be restored as either *hreop-waren, *hrepa-waren or *hreop-wehren, *hrepa-wehren, corresponding to an Anglo-Saxon word, hreopseta, "settlement on a bank (or river)." The -waren would be from Germanic *weraz, "people," resulting in "river-people" or "bank-people." The -wehren would be from Germanic *warjan, "defend," resulting in "defenders of the shore." The latter title would be more likely to be conferred by the Romans in the hope that the Franks would live up to it than it would be a self-name of the Franks, who were not defending the shore against anything. The *hrepa- or *hreop- remains obscure. From context it must mean "bank."

A second point of view is that Ripuarian was originally Latin and was loaned into Germanic. This view is based on a word-pair given in the Summarium Heinrici, an 11th century revision of Isidore of Seville, stating the Old High German equivalents of some Latin words, including Ripuarii: Riphera. The latter is textually reconstructed to *ripfera, except that "phonetically *ripf- cannot come from rip-;" that is, Ripuarii, not being in the process leading to Old High German, is not Germanic. In this view, the Riparii of Jordanes, the first attestation of the word, if the Ripuarians were really meant, is the original. It is simply a plural noun formed from the adjective, Riparius, "of the bank" or "of the river." Ripuarii and Ripoari would be corruptions. Other attested forms of the adjective are Riparenses and Riparienses.

The remaining point of view in the logical series of three affirms that Ripuarian was a mixed word to begin with, one reconstruction being *ripwarjoz. It seems to be analogous to the later formation, Ribuarius, in which Gallo-Roman *ribbar replaces Roman ripa. From the Gallo-Roman came the French rive, "bank," and a group of words based on it. In this point of view, where the Romans used Riparii and later their own other Latin adjectives, the people of the Frankish frontier, living in a mixed culture from Cologne to Reims, were using a milieu vocabulary such as *ripwarjoz.