The first part of the word viking, or vik simply means "bay" in nordic languages

acadapter 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, but similarity alone is not a guarantee that words are related. The words val and [h]val are not related in Swedish, even though they ended up with the same pronunciation and spelling in the modern language. Sometimes, words can end up as "fossil words" because the main usage of the word was lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word

This can also happen to word roots. Because this is about a historical word, it's interesting to look at the broader Indo-European language tree for clues about the original meaning.

▲

BurningFrog 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The even firster part "vi" means "we" though.

▲

DrewADesign 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And vi was an outgrowth of ex, which was an improved version of ed, which in my experience, roughly translates to ‘ugh’.

	▲	BurningFrog 22 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In old Norway, the best vi hacker was crowned as vi king every midsummer.
	▲	BobBagwill 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Argghhh! When all ye got is a 300 Baud connection and a ASR-33, then ye be thanking your lucky stars for ed! And pray that the ribbon ain't worn out, and that the paper tape don't jam! A pox o' chads on your house, ya mewlin' landlubber!

▲

runarberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t think -kingur is a suffix in old norse. It is not a suffix in modern Icelandic, and I can’t think of any suffix like that.

In fact I don‘t remember a suffix which attaches to a pronoun. In modern Icelandic at least we like to introduce more pronouns or conjugate them rather then to suffix or prefix them.

If the word was broken as vi-kingur, I think the modern Icelandic would be við-kingur (or við-lingur), which is simply not a word in the language.

▲

b3nt-fiber 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

webay hmm. they started a trend