1 On the etymology of “father” Flash article n. 11, updated August 2024 By Massimo Fongaro Premise If we compare the languages of distant cultures, we discover surprising linguistic correspondences. This is the case with the word for “father” in many languages. Indeed, in the Indoeuropean language family we find the Latin pater, Celtic athair, Tocarian A pācar, English father, Gothic patḗr, Greek πατήρ, armenian hayr, Sanscrit pitā ́ . According to Historical Linguistics these words would originate from a common root *ph₂tḗr. This root belonged to the language spoken by the Indoeuropean people; beginning in the V-IV millennia BC, dispersal from the original homeland occurred with the separation of the various Indoeuropean peoples; thus the root *ph₂tḗr would have survived in the various known languages. Furthermore, the root *ph₂tḗr is sometimes accompanied by the Indoeuropean word for “god” *Djeus; see the formula *Dyeus pater: sanskrit dyaus pitar, greek zeû páter, latin iuppiter. *Dyeus pater is considered a divinity common to the various Indoeuropean cultures and would be the personification of the sky or of the atmospheric phenomena that in the sky are born and take place; this deity was consequently conceived as the “father of all deities” (Villar 1996). Linguistic comparison has an extraordinary historical value, as it reveals the linguistic structures of languages spoken by very different cultures. Some of its conclusions are questionable, however, because the reconstruction of the language and culture of the Indoeuropeans is theoretical and there is no written documentation of the PIE proto-Indoeuropean language, nor evident historical traces of the alleged Indoeuropean people. In this case the root *ph₂tḗr is an abstract word devoid of any documentation. The same goes for the root *Dyeus. Instead, I think we have to start from the civilizations that thrived in the Bronze Age. From the Mediterranean to the Middle East we encounter the civilization of the Mycenaeans, Minoan Crete, Babylonians and Assyrians, and, even more ancient, that of the Sumerians. Of these civilizations we possess extensive historical documentation, both written and archaeological.