Resumen de Ragazzo, un’etimologia da riconsiderare
The current etymology of Italian ragazzo ‘boy’ from Arabic raqqāṣ ‘messenger’, which was proposed independently by J. Corominas and G.B. Pellegrini and generally accepted, is questioned above all on the basis of its areal distribution, since the loanword is absent in Sicily and the oldest records come from Middle Italy; moreover the meaning ‘messenger’ never occurs in these records. Instead the Late Greek loan ἑργ άτης ‘servant, worker’ corresponding to Late Latin regatius/ragatius is preferred, which was supposedly spread over from the Byzantinian domain according to a previous and undeservedly rejected hypothesis. The Greek loan fits the oldest records of regazzo/ragazzo and the difficulty of the initial metathesis er- > re- is easily accounted for.
