Roman handle... The US Senate. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
This week's midterm elections in the US led me, naturally, to consider what the founding fathers gave away about their world view when naming their revolutionary institutions. The influence of Rome is obvious in naming the ground on which the government meets the Capitol, and in naming the upper chamber the Senate (a name derived from a Latin word meaning "the meeting of the old men"). But the influence of Britain should not be underestimated. It is apparent of course in the bicameral organisation of Congress, but also in the common metaphors - chambers, houses, floors.
The words for parliaments (from French parler "to talk") and congresses (from a Latin word meaning "to come together") are full of historical interest in many languages. The Athenian ekklesia or assembly gave its name to the churches of Spanish, French and Italian - iglesia, église and chiesa. (The Germanic words, it seems, are from κυριaκον - [house] "of the Lord").
The German word for parliament, and its English translations, are also of great interest. Who has not sniggered with me at Luther's disgust when up against the Diet of Worms? But when did a German "diet" become a "tag"? I discovered the answer to this only last week, when reading Mary Fulbrook's Concise History of Germany. When describing the institutions of 15th century Germany, Fulbrooks refers to "the Imperial Diet" - the same body before which Luther appeared. But when discussing those of the 19th and 20th centuries, she refers to "the Reichstag".
The thing is, the German word is the same in both cases. Fulbrook can't be blamed, obviously, for using the most common English terms for the two - quite different - things, but I think it reveals something about the Anglophone conception of Germany that we make Charles V more approachable for ourselves than we do the Germans of 60 years ago.
But perhaps the stranger thing is not that English should have different words, but that German should have the same. I looked up the German wikipedia page for reichstag, only to find it's a "disambiguation page" - did I want "Reichstag des Heiligen Römischen Reiches", the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, or "Reichstag der Weimarer Republik, the Imperial Diet of the Weimar Republic? It seems the Germans can't conceive of the two reichstags being related either.
