Over the last few weeks I’ve been busy with preparations for my next holiday. I’m planning on spending a week or two in the new year overseas. As most of my plans are already confirmed, today I set aside some time to finalise my visa.
I was looking through my passport when I noticed the word “lieu” on the information page. It was displayed as the French translation for “place” i.e. the place or government department that issued my passport. (Certain information inside South African passports are presented in both English and French)
This left me a little confused. Upon seeing it I immediately thought of the English term “in lieu of”, which I had always understood to mean along the lines of “as compensation for”, or “in return for”.
I tried to make sense of why the word for “compensation” was being used by French to mean “place”. Were the English and the French versions false friends perhaps? Did the two languages share the same word in the same spelling while possessing different meanings? Or had I simply misunderstood the meaning of the English?
In the right place at the right time
I looked “lieu” up in the English dictionary. It turns out the meaning of “in lieu of” is in fact “in place of”. So “lieu” does then carry the meaning of “place”. My initial understanding had been mistaken. Even though order was restored I couldn’t help giving it more thought. Especially since I’ve spent the last few years picking up a sister language of French.
I wondered whether there was a connection to Italian, and that’s when I had the epiphany.
The word for “place” in Italian is “luogo”, which bears some similarity to “lieu”. For one they both start with an L. However the Italian is two syllables long while the French is just one, but I’m guessing it’s not uncommon for French cognates to be somewhat shorter than their Romance counterparts.
Surely these two words, the French and the Italian, had to be related?
Everything falls into place
I looked up the etymology of “lieu” and then of “luogo”. Indeed they are both derived from the Latin “locum”. The word “locum” is itself a declension, specifically the accusative singular of “locus” which means “place” as expected.
All in all we’ve discovered a nice connection between English, French, Italian and Latin. “locus” passed down to French as “lieu” which was subsequently borrowed by English. On the other side of the language tree we see that “locus” passed into Italian as “luogo”.
Summary
The English “lieu” comes from French and means “place”. It has the same root as the Italian “luogo”. The two words are derived from the Latin “locus”.