What is that below? If you answered “Well, duh, it’s clearly the Emperor Trajan” you would be correct but missing the point. But that is not your fault, of course (and the answer is impressive in any event!).
Now, we’ve been told that the Slavic word for “king”, i.e., “krol” or “kruhl” (Polish pronounciation) comes from Karl, i.e., Karl der Grosse, i.e., Charlemagne. What’s that? But the word appears throughout Slavdom and by the time of Karl (circa 800) the Slavs would have already spread out. So, answer comes back, how about Karl Martel? That gets us another 60 years but that is hardly enough. But hey, you make history with the facts you have not with the facts you would like to have, we are told.
Of course, there is no evidence for any of these suggestions but they all seemed comfortable enough for everyone. Those who chafed at this, chafed mostly at the notion of a German/Frankish king giving such a “civilizationally” basic word to the Slavs. They suspected that there may be something wrong with this picture but they attributed the German insistence on this connection to “typical” German “arrogance.”
But there is something else here.
Let us state the point more clearly. Underneath Trajan’s butt on the coin above there sits a chair. That chair is called the sella curulis or the “curule seat“. It was used by Roman emperors as well as Dagobert and later Frankish Kings.
The Original
So is it better to be accused of arrogance or be accused of hiding the ball on something? Does it depend on what you are hiding?
If the Slavic kruhl or krol comes from the chair itself then it is possible that it entered Slavic much earlier than the time of Charlemagne. Perhaps at the times of Dagobert but… perhaps earlier. The word is apparently Roman (related to a “chariot” – perhaps). If so, that would be a problem if you were trying to argue that the Slavs arrived in Europe only in the 6th century (you could make Dagobert work but certainly not the Roman emperors).
So let us give one back. What if the Germanic word for King, i.e., König really comes from Slavic? What? How is that? Well, as we know the German endings –ig often come from the Slavic –ik. The Slavic –ik generally refers to a profession, e.g., in Polish bartn-ik, mieczn-ik, etc. (incidentally, there is Koppernik too, perhaps a hybrid German-Polish word).
Germanic König on a “konik” leading his UeberGothen “To War!”
So what could it come from? How about kon-ik? The king is the man who rides a horse while his soldiers trudge on on foot…
And here is Emperor Macrinus on a similar throne:
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