🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3918bbfb.12578766@news.sprint.ca>,
Gustav Horvath <turan@sprint.ca> wrote:
>On 9 May 2000 21:47:46 GMT, ajk@socrates.berkeley.edu (Adam Jacobs)
>wrote:
>
>>It very likely does come from the Hungarian toponym Kocs (with *no* accent
>>grave over the "o" -- Hungarian doesn't even employ the accent grave).   The
>>wagons made there were called kocsi szekerek 'wagons from Kocs'; later the
>>word kocsi alone came to refer to the town's most famous product.  Hence G.
>>Kutsche, etc. etc.  
>
>In what year was the kocs-i kocsi was supposedly invented?
>
>Gustav

In or before the 15th century, one would imagine.  MNyTESz(*) has a
citation from 1493, in Latin:  "Item Curriferis kochiensibus qui de 
Buda huc Agriam cum familia mea duxerant dedy den. IIIC" which I read:
"Item.  To the coachman of Kocs who brought me here with my family from
B. to A. I gave 300 denarii" -- presumably a line in the writer's
accounts-book.  Here of course the reference is to a coachman, not a
coach, from Kocs (kocsi kocsis nem kocsi kocsi!) but obviously by then
the kocsi kocsi[s] had some reputation.  1494 obliges with a citation, again
in Latin, this time referring to the coach itself: "..Unum Currum Kochy.."
Thereafter there are Hungarian citations for "kocsi szeker" and then "kocsi"
aplenty.

There follows a fairly long article detailing the semantic development of the
word.  I don't have time to type it in and translate now but if anyone is 
*really* interested I can do so.

Adam Jacobs
UCLA

(*) A magyar nyelv torteneti-etimologiai szotara, II. k. H-\'O  (Historical-
etymological dictionary of the Hungarian language, vol. 2: H-\'O).  Akademiai
kiado, Budapest, 1970.