I know that the German nobility title “Herzog” is translated as “Duke” in English. Similarly, “Graf” = “Count”.
But I’m wondering if there are any English words that are cognates of German “Herzog” and “Graf”. Here’s an example of what I mean: German “Ritter” = English “Knight”. “Ritter” has an English cognate of “rider” (as in “horse rider”, presumably).
Perhaps the cognates are archaic English words. An Oxford English Dictionary may be needed to answer this one.
The most proximae English cognate for “Graf” is the little-used suffix “-grave” (as in “Margrave”). A more distant cognate is the adjective “grave”, in the sense of “heavy, influential”.
Now, “Herzog” is still a mystery. I noticed that that the Hungarian word for “duke” is herceg. Maybe German borrowed the word from Hungarian and it never made it into English.
Also, it appears that “Herzog” covers not only “duke”, but “earl” as well.
It’s an old Germanic word meaning (loosely translated) leader of the army.
Quick check shows “margrave” as an obsolete synonym for “marquis” cognate with the German markgraf (from mark-, “border”, + graf, cf. Marches, Marcher Lords, all that stuff). There’s also “landgrave”, same sort of derivation. Can’t find a source for just “grave” as a noble title, though.
But I think you might be out of luck otherwise … most titles of English nobility in use at the moment came over with the Normans, so are Latin-derived by way of French. With the exception of “Earl” (from the Old English eorl, cognate with Scandinavian jarl … hmm … is there a modern German cognate to this?)
Most of the pre-Norman noble titles survive in worrds for administrative roles - alderman, reeve, sheriff, that kind of thing. What are the German equivalents there?
(Previews, sees bordelond’s already got “margrave”, posts anyway…)
Thanks for the lynchpin clue. The most proximate English cognates of “Herzog” are the verbs “harry” and “harrass”. I suppose “harrier” can be thought of as a noun cognate.
According to the Swedish Academy Dictionary of the Swedish Language there’s an Old English word girba or ger?fa corresponding to Graf (Sw. greve). The meaning is Royal Steward (or something along that line).
Being a member of the Hash House Harriers I will keep that in mind. 