2985: Iron and Sanguine: Etymologically Related Feb 22, 2025

‘Iron’ is not related to ‘blood’, nor is ‘ferro’ (iron) and ‘sangue’ (blood) in Italian related, but ‘iron’ and ‘sangue’ are, surprisingly at first glance, related etymologically. ‘Sangue’ from the Latin ‘sanguis’, traces back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) h₁ésh₂r̥, meaning ‘blood’ or ‘red’, due to the reddish hue of oxidized iron. The specified oxidization is not merely pedantic, but it appears that PIE had two words for the different states of blood: * h₁ésh₂r̥, and *krewh₂. Anyway, this distinction is apparent in Romance languages’ words for blood like ‘sangue’ as mentioned, but also words for ‘iron’ in Germanic and Celtic languages. The appearance of the <R> instead of the <S> is only from a later change of rhoticization of [s] that occurred before English even existed; compare this with the German cognate ‘Eisen’ which retains the [s] with (Germanic) Danish ‘jern’ and the (Celtic) Welsh ‘haearn’ and Irish ‘iarann’ and indeed the Armenian արյուն (aryun).