I can imagine that it’s ultimately related through Indo-European.
It’s an inflected form of kara ‘to love’ (or cara in the SWF/T spelling I usually use, which matches the traditional spelling better).
Presumably also related to words such as Latin cārus ‘dear’, English charity, and Irish cara ‘friend’.
Swedish kär ‘dear’ seems to me to belong to the same group of words.
I wonder if that's where the name Karen comes from?
I had always assumed that it was a variant of ‘Karin’ and that both came from ‘Katherine’, i.e. ultimately from Greek Aikaterinê, with spelling influence from Greek katharos ‘clean, pure’.
Wiktionary says that ‘Karen’ is (originally) an old Danish form of ‘Katharina’ and ‘Karin’ an old Swedish form of ‘Katarina’.
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I can imagine that it’s ultimately related through Indo-European.
It’s an inflected form of kara ‘to love’ (or cara in the SWF/T spelling I usually use, which matches the traditional spelling better).
Presumably also related to words such as Latin cārus ‘dear’, English charity, and Irish cara ‘friend’.
Swedish kär ‘dear’ seems to me to belong to the same group of words.
I wonder if that's where the name Karen comes from?
I had always assumed that it was a variant of ‘Karin’ and that both came from ‘Katherine’, i.e. ultimately from Greek Aikaterinê, with spelling influence from Greek katharos ‘clean, pure’.
Wiktionary says that ‘Karen’ is (originally) an old Danish form of ‘Katharina’ and ‘Karin’ an old Swedish form of ‘Katarina’.
So, apparently not related to the name.
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