Herkomstregels

Herkomstregels is a term used in linguistics and lexicography to describe rules and guidelines that govern how the origin of words is understood, recorded, and analyzed. They concern etymology—the study of a word's history and its cognates across languages—as well as the documentation of historical forms and development of meaning, pronunciation, and spelling.

In practice, herkomstregels include decisions about the source language of a word, the identification of older forms, and the description of regular sound changes, affixation, and semantic shifts that link related words. Etymological notes in dictionaries often reflect these rules by indicating the word's origin, historical form, and the transition from earlier languages or stages of the language.

In the processing of loanwords, these rules guide how foreign terms are adopted and adapted to the target language, including phonetic rendering, spelling adjustments, and morphological integration while indicating their foreign origin.

In historical linguistics, herkomstregels underpin the reconstruction of ancestor languages and the explanation of systematic correspondences among related languages, such as how certain consonant or vowel changes propagate through a language family.

Etymology is inherently interpretive; not all origins are certain, and a word may have multiple plausible sources or different paths of development over time. Researchers weigh evidence from historical texts, phonology, and cross-linguistic cognates.

Related fields include etymology, lexicography, and historical linguistics.