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Etymology
The Modern English word "folk", derives from Old English "folc" meaning "common people", "men", "tribe" or "multitude". The Old English noun itself came from Proto-Germanic "*fulka" which perhaps originally referred to a "host of warriors" (compare Old Norse "volc" meaning "people" but more so "army" or "detachment" and Lithuanian "pulkas" meaning "crowd", the latter is considered to be an early Lithuanian loanword from Germanic origin). The word gradually disappeared from English after the Norman Invasion but was reintroduced in 1846 by antiquarian William J. Thoms (1803-85) as an Anglo-Saxonism. This word revived folk in a modern sense of "of the common people, whose culture is handed down orally," and opened up a flood of compound formations, eg. folk art (1921), folk-hero (1899), folk-medicine (1898), folk-tale (1891), folk-song (1847), folk-dance (1912). Folk-music is from 1889; in reference to the branch of modern popular music (originally associated with Greenwich Village in New York City) it dates from 1958.
Cognates in other Germanic language
Folk has a cognate in almost every other Germanic language, all deriving from Proto-Germanic "*fulka", some are listed below:
- Danish - folk
- Dutch - volk
- Swedish - folk
- Frisian - folk
- Norwegian - folk
- German - Volk
- Afrikaans - folk
In all Germanic languages, the variant of "folk" means "people" or something related to the people.
Folk in German
- For other uses, see Volk (disambiguation).
In German it is commonly used as prefix in words such as Volksentscheid (plebiscite) or Völkerbund (League of Nations), or the car manufacturer Volkswagen (literally, "people's car").
A number of völkisch movements were set up in Germany after World War I. Combining interest in folklore, ecology, occultism and romanticism with ethnic nationalism, their ideologies were a strong influence on the Nazi party, which itself was inspired by Adolf Hitler's membership of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party).
During the years of the Third Reich, this term and its adjective völkisch became heavily politicised, particularly in slogans such as Volk ohne Raum — "(a) people without space" or Völkischer Beobachter ("popular observer"), an NSDAP party newspaper. Also the political slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer ("One people, one country/empire, one leader"). Today, the term völkisch is largely restricted to historical contexts describing that era.
The Nazi-era use of Volk could, depending on context, be interpreted as "race," "Germanic," or "European."
Because Volk is the generic German word for "people", its use does not necessarily denote any particular political views in post-1945 Germany.
See also
"Folk"