GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 117 



for king, but also honing and konig. The form kunne, 

 as in einkunne and pfaffenkunne, is to be noticed. 

 Even if konig is to be deduced from kunni, and not 

 directly from kone, it must be noted that the king is 

 king in virtue of his being the son of the queen, i.e. 

 one of the kin, and not because he is a ' man of race ' 

 or of noble descent. The identity, indeed, of kunne, 

 the womb, and kunni, kin, is illustrated by Arabic 

 batn for belly and kin, and rehem for womb and kin. 

 The affix -ing in a variety of O.H.G-. words usually marks 

 "the son of." Thus we have in the primitive idea of 

 king in all probability only the idea of the offspring of 

 the kone. The kuning derives his rights from the kone, 

 the king is evolved from the leader in war the cyne- 

 lilaford of the old kindred group. Only the patri- 

 archal age could unconsciously produce the kon-ing-inne, 

 kueniginne, konigin as a correlative to the konig. In 

 England our retention of the word queen has saved us 

 from this. Thus our first series of words depending on 

 the root kyn or gan 1 has led us to the conception of 

 the womb as the primitive source of relationship, to the 

 woman as queen and head of the kin, and to the king- 

 ship as derived from the queen. The reader who will 

 ponder over this, will understand why kings are so 

 plentiful in fairy-tales, and why the normal road to a 

 kingdom is to marry a king's daughter. 



1 Some philologists have connected this root with Sanskrit gna, Latin genu, 

 A.S. cned, English, knee, and so with a root meaning kneel. Compare Latin 

 nitor, which marks either kneeling or bearing. If this were true, it would 

 denote that the primitive Aryan woman knelt in giving birth. This posture 

 seems far from universal among savage women, and if it were, the act of giving 

 birth would probably receive a name as early as that of kneeling, and there would 

 be no more reason to derive the former from the later than vice versd. 



