ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines domestic terminologies in Europe since the sixteenth century, focusing on the trajectories of three central notions: house, household and family with various family specifications. It looks at translations of domestic terms in the long sixteenth century, before proceeding from the house-variants to family-terms. The chapter presents two examples: a brief passage of Bodin’s Republic and some key words used in the Bible. It is based on entries in standard historic dictionaries and encyclopaedias, enriched by a number of political, philosophical and scientific texts. Research on domestic terminology past and present has been done in history, linguistics and anthropology, sometimes with blurred boundaries between these disciplines. The term ‘house’ appeared not to be so language-specific, at least in its outer form. It is very probable, however, that it was composed of various semantic mixtures.
