Community

Discussion

Etymology of Community

Bernard Lietaer [1] suggested:

The origin of the word "community" comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. So community literally means to give among each other. Therefore I define my community as a group of people who welcome and honor my gifts, and from whom I can reasonably expect to receive gifts in return.

Kris Roose looked to his schooltime Latin dictionaries, and discovered:

The origin of words as common, community, communication, munition, municipality is munis, a (defence) wall. The verb munire (still used in French) means "to provide the building blocks of that wall". Munition originally meant the weapons used on that wall. A com-munity is the group behind the same munis, and a municipality is the organization or government of that community. Munia are the public duties and office on those defence buildings. Communication is the interaction between the people behind the defence wall. Communist is a member of a commune, a French social and political community. During the French Revolution it was the name of the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795.

The etymology is very suggestive: a community shares a higher level of intimacy and vulnerability, protected by a wall against more primitive (aggressive, military) interactions.

Munus, meaning gift, can't be the etymological origin of community, because the root of munus is muner- (plural munera, hence re-muner-ation), and these letters usually don't disappear in natural etymology.