Dear all who are interested in the new hypothesis on the etymology of "tarocchi":
vh0610 wrote: 09 Mar 2021, 21:42
H1: Etymology is: tarocchi = tar‘occhi = tarh‘ occhi or tara/tari occhi = tara eyes or tare eyes
[I propose this also in light of the earlier spelling version “tarochi”, which is “only” a question of spelling in these times in this region with the respective dialects – if “only” is appropriate here]
The novelty of the hypothesis is therefore mainly the “eyes” not so much the “tara(re)”: “Tarare” stems from the Arabic Tarh’ or Tárah, which is already known in the Tarot context, see for instance the article of Andrea Vitali on the etymology of “tarocchi” on [
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=220&lng=eng]
I do think that I have found strong evidence -at least to my eyes-- on the "occhi"-part
vh0610 wrote: 09 Mar 2021, 21:42
H3: The tar‘occhi stems from the scoring of points ---perhaps implicitly in, but certainly after the game for determining the winner. There eyes have to be tared, as is formulated in
H4: The points were called „eyes“ as the „eyes“ on a dice. The games present in Nothern Italy before the cards arrived were mainly chess, tables (backgammon) and dices. People were used to count points when playing with dices and transferred the counting of „eyes“ of dices to counting of „eyes“ of tarocchi.
[Side remark: there are dices present on the table of the bagatella of later decks as the Budapest deck, see e.g. [
https://cards.old.no/t/] ]
The points of dices are still called „eyes“ in German („Augen eines Würfels“) and Italian („occhi di un dado“).
which turns the hypotheses at least into an opinion: on the wonderful website trionfi.com, one can read under the title "Imperatori decks, Karnöffel and others"
http://trionfi.com/0/c/03/index.php that -I quote-:
1455
Molitors
Würfellosbuch mentions, dass mit "lützel Augen", small cards, im "wildem Carnöffelspyle" a win could be made
Hence, we have a proof in the literature, that for the card game Karnoeffel, the points of the cards where also called "eyes" and hence the "eyes" of the dice was transferred to the "eyes" of cards. May I ask if anyone has the copy of the respective page, in order to determine whether the "lützel Augen" are small cards or already points as in a point-trick-taking game? However, even if the small cards are meant: "eyes" are points on cards. And that there is a very probable relation between Karnoeffel and Tarot (over the imperatori cards) is discussed in
http://trionfi.com/0/c/, hence it seems to me very probable that also the points of cards in Northern Italy were called "occhi" (as still today the "occhi" of dices).
Together with
vh0610 wrote:
Tarot scoring
The system by which players work out their scores in almost all Tarot games may appear "eccentric and puzzling", but the rationale to it is that, originally, the cards were each valued at one less point than that shown above (e.g. Kings were worth 4 points and low cards had no point value), but every trick taken scored one point. Dummett argues that the tedious work of counting tricks card points separately, led players to fuse the two processes into a single operation. There are several practical methods, but all are designed to achieve the same aim: a quick and relatively simple way of calculating the score.[16]
and
vh0610 wrote:
Based on the above opinions, my (perhaps) new hypothesis w.r.t. the Tarh-part of the word is that tarare is close to but not exactly meant as “most likely the opponent's cards or points in the game”, but first in its original meaning:
H2: The Tarh-Part of “tar’occhi” follows the original meaning of tarare of a pair of balances: it means to detract or to deduce the weight of packaging from the weight of the good plus packaging, such that you get the weight of the good -- what really counts at the end, if you are a merchant. [see H5 for further details]
[....]
H5: The name denotes the new element in the gameplay and hence makes sense as a signifier: a balance has to be tared w.r.t. eyes
[w.r.t. this, see the last posts above]
it seems to me to be strong evidence that
H1: Etymology is: tarocchi = tar‘occhi = tarh‘ occhi or tara/tari occhi = tara eyes or tare eyes
can count as an opinion to be discussed further.
What do you think about this line of thought?