In Medieval Latin, the adjective armelinus, -na and the noun armelinus are attested in notarial documents and other texts from different regions of Western Europe, in a wide chronology. At first glance, both the name and the adjective are related to the classical Latin demonym Armenius, but this etymon does not explain several aspects of its form and function. The present paper reviews all the etymological hypotheses suggested so far and arrives at the proposal that armelinus could be the result of the adaptation of the Andalusian Arabic armaní ~ arminí ‘Armenian (tissue)’, after converging semantically with armini ~ ermini, derived from the Latin armenius ‘(skin of the) Mustela ermine’. The authors suggest that both terms – adjective and noun – could arise in the territories corresponding to the linguistic domain of Catalan and that they passed from there to Italy and the rest of Western Europe.
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