Nest: a rare and perplexing surname

By chance, I came across the surname "Gnaizda".  Its phonological configuration puzzled me for a while, but then I began to formulate hypotheses about its origin.  I briefly thought that it might have been Semitic and considered the possibility that it was cognate with "genesis".  It was easy to rule out "genesis", though, because that goes back to the PIE root *gene- ("give birth, beget").

Rather than making stabs in the dark about what language Gnaizda might derive from, I thought it would be more sensible to search for individuals with that surname and see whether there were any pertinent biographical, genealogical, or onomastic information available about them.

The most prominent Gnaizda I found was the civil justice advocate, Robert Gnaizda (1936-2020), who was the General Counsel and Policy Director for the Greenlining Institute based in Berkeley, California.  There are many references to him on the internet.  Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article on Robert Gnaizda does not provide any etymological information about his surname.

Here's what l could glean from various sources.  Robert Gnaizda, the civil rights attorney, passed away in 2020 at age 83. His grandfather was a Russian Jew (from what's now Ukraine) who came through Ellis Island sometime between 1900 and 1910. At the time he didn't speak English, probably only Russian and Yiddish. Upon settling in Brooklyn, the family surname was Gnaizda, but I have not been able to find a record of that surname in Russia or in the Ellis Island records from that decade. I have no idea how the family ended up with that name.  There was nothing else for me to do but forge ahead as best as I could on my own.

I was familiar with the Hebrew word "genizah", since Penn houses many volumes of the famous Cairo Genizah, which was discovered in 1896.  Moreover, two scholars associated with Penn were awarded MacArthur Fellowships to work on the Cairo Genzah manuscripts, Shelomo D. Goitein in 1983 and Marina Rustow in 2015.

I suspected that "genizah" was an expansion from a hypothetical Semitic triconsontal root g-n-z, and it turns out I was right:

From Hebrew גְּנִיזָה (g'nizá, “archiving, preservation, storage; hiding; genizah”) (plural גְּנִיזוֹת (g'nizót)), from Old Persian *ganzam, from Old Median *ganǰam (“depository; treasure”).

(Wiktionary)

The word genizah comes from the Hebrew triconsonantal root g-n-z, which means "to hide" or "to put away", from Old Median *ganza- (“depository; treasure”). The derived noun meant 'hiding' and later a place where one put things, and is perhaps best translated as "archive" or "repository".

(Wikipedia)

Though it was fun researching the etymology of "genizah", I decided not to pursue it as the source of Gnaizda because, among other reasons, I couldn't determine how, within Hebrew, it acquired suffix -da nor how initial consonant cluster gn- arose within Hebrew.

Martin Schwartz called my attention to Russian "gnezdo гнездо" and Polish "gniazdo", both of which mean "nest".

Here's the etymology of the Russian word:

From Old East Slavic гнѣздо (gnězdo), from Proto-Slavic *gnězdo, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *nisdá, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós.

(source)

Here's the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European root *nisdós:

From the adverb *h₁ni (“down”), from *h₁én (“in”), + the root *sed- (“sit”) + *-ós. Literally "where [the bird] sits down".

(source)

Cf. English "nest":

From Middle English nest, nist, nyst, from Old English nest, from Proto-West Germanic *nest, from Proto-Germanic *nestą, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós (“nest”), literally "where [the bird] sits down", a compound of *ni (“down”) (whence also English nether) + the zero-grade of the root *sed- (“to sit”) (whence also English sit).

(source)

Martin further suggested that "Gnaizdo" probably comes from a toponym and cited "Swallow's Nest" in Crimea (Ukrainian: Ластівчи́не гніздо́, romanized: Lastivchýne hnizdó; Russian: Ласточки́но гнездо́, romanized: Lastochkíno gnezdó)

So where did that initial "g" of "gnaizda" come from?  I surmise that somehow it was picked up from Germanic, which does have words beginning with "gn-" (e.g., "gnat", "gnit", "gnaw", "gnash"); cf. "kn-" words, which are plenteous in Germanic.

It's interesting that it was the initial "gn-" cluster that strongly attracted my attention in the first place.  It looked Germanic, but it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the word.

 

Selected readings

• "Whimsical surnames" (3/16/24)
• "Ukrainian at the edge" (10/30/22)

[Thanks to Peter Golden and Mehmet Olmez]