Faith & RitualGreek → English
Patriarch
/ˈpeɪtriɑːrk/noun
The male head of a family or tribe, or a bishop of the highest rank in the Eastern churches.
The Greek roots
πατριά
patriá
lineage, clan
ἄρχειν
árkhein
to rule, lead
Literally: “ruler of a lineage”
The story of the word
The first element is not πατήρ, father, but πατριά, a line descended from a common father, so a patriarch governs a bloodline rather than a household. The Septuagint applied the word to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the early church handed it to the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. English had it by about 1200, centuries before it built patriarchy out of the same parts.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1200
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
patriarchymonarchhierarchyanarchy
In a sentence
The Ecumenical Patriarch still keeps his seat in Istanbul.
At ninety he was the patriarch of a family that filled three tables.