What Links: A Farm, A Throne, The Firmament, and a King of Ancient Persia?
Saturday 17 January 2026 at 00:52
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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday 17 January 2026 at 00:56
The first three words have reached us via Old French and trace back ultimately to a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *dher-, "support firmly".
Farm comes from Old French ferme. This originally meant a rent but came to mean the land being rented and then just the land. It comes from Medieval Latin firma, a fixed payment, which derives from Latin firmus, "stable, fixed", and ultimately from the root *dher-.
Throne is from Old French, trone, and this comes from Latin thronus, from Greek thronos, "throne", and this is thought to also be from *dher-.
Firmament is from Old French firmament, from Latin firmamentum, "firmament", again from firmus but with a sense of a strong support, and thence to the sense of the roof of the heavens
this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire
as Hamlet calls it.
I stumbled across all this because I heard about someone named Darius, which I remembered was the name of more than one king of Ancient Persia, and I wondered what it meant. In Old Persian it was Darayavaus, with the first element once more from *dher-and the second meaning something like the "the good".
I looked the name Darius up and found the PIE root and then looked that up on https://www.etymonline.com/ and that's where I read about these really surprising connections. It had never occurred to me that throne and farm might be related.
What Links: A Farm, A Throne, The Firmament, and a King of Ancient Persia?
The first three words have reached us via Old French and trace back ultimately to a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *dher-, "support firmly".
Farm comes from Old French ferme. This originally meant a rent but came to mean the land being rented and then just the land. It comes from Medieval Latin firma, a fixed payment, which derives from Latin firmus, "stable, fixed", and ultimately from the root *dher-.
Throne is from Old French, trone, and this comes from Latin thronus, from Greek thronos, "throne", and this is thought to also be from *dher-.
Firmament is from Old French firmament, from Latin firmamentum, "firmament", again from firmus but with a sense of a strong support, and thence to the sense of the roof of the heavens
this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire
as Hamlet calls it.
I stumbled across all this because I heard about someone named Darius, which I remembered was the name of more than one king of Ancient Persia, and I wondered what it meant. In Old Persian it was Darayavaus, with the first element once more from *dher- and the second meaning something like the "the good".
I looked the name Darius up and found the PIE root and then looked that up on https://www.etymonline.com/ and that's where I read about these really surprising connections. It had never occurred to me that throne and farm might be related.