Derivation of Maid, Maidli, Meydli

Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Rua

Why do you think maid must be from *magadīn? It looks much more like *magaþ.

Rua (mew)19:01, 12 July 2020

Yes, I was wrong I thought also "maid" means somehow "girl". However this is true only for the Alemannic words Maydli, Meydli or Meydschi were the meaning is effectively little girl (= magadīn). I have now learned that the sense of a word is in that context here not the relevant point, the genetic relationship is what really matters.

magaþ => maiden, meiden => maid (young women)

magaþ => magad => maget => Maidli, Maydli, Meydli, Meydschi (girl, young girl)

And by the way, the page for German word "Maid" could be regarding this aspect improved. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Maid

The same is true also for the the High German word "Mädchen" (which is effectively derived from magadīn). Also this page could be in this aspect somewhat improved.

magadīn => magedin => Mädchen

Thanks and regards

Lion10 (talk)13:52, 13 July 2020

Unless I'm really missing something, German Mädchen is not a descendant of Proto-West Germanic *magadīn. Rather, German Mädchen is from German Magd + diminutive suffix -chen. German Magd is descended from Proto-West Germanic *magaþ.

Also, English maid is not derived from maiden, but is instead descended from *magaþ, same as German Magd. Meanwhile, English maiden is descended from *magadīn. The etymology currently given in the maid entry appears to be incorrect.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig15:44, 13 July 2020

Well, it seems that this overall topic is somewhat more complex than I thought. So according to the answer from Eiríkr Útlendi, the following Mädchen entry in magaþ is also incorrect.

It would be really great if someone with a linguistic background can check & correct the whole matter.

However, at least the following derivation should be correct:

Alemannic Maydli is from (old?) German Mayd + diminutive suffix -li. So, the Alemannic term Maydli is effectively descended from Proto-West Germanic *magaþ.

Lion10 (talk)09:45, 18 July 2020

Derived, not descended. Descent implies that the same word continued to exist and be propagated through the generations.

Rua (mew)10:13, 18 July 2020