Bavarian

How to spell bavarian

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce bavarian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bavarian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Bavaria, the region of southern Germany, or to its people and culture.
2. nounA person who comes from or lives in Bavaria.

Bavarian in a sentence

• adjective

  The festival featured a bavarian brass band and traditional dress.

• noun

  As a proud bavarian, he spoke the local dialect at home.

• adjective

  They toured several bavarian castles during their holiday in southern Germany.

• noun

  The guide was a bavarian who knew every alpine trail in the region.

Where does bavarian come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on Bavaria, the Latinised name of the large region in southern Germany, to which English adds the familiar suffix -an meaning 'belonging to' or 'native of'. The place name itself traces back to the Baiuvarii, a Germanic tribe whose name combined an element linked to the ancient Boii (a Celtic people who once lived in the area) with the Germanic root -varii meaning 'dwellers' or 'settlers', so it literally described 'the people who dwell in the land of the Boii'. The tribal name passed into Latin as Baiovarii and then into the scholarly Latin form Bavaria, which is how the region became known across medieval Europe. English adopted the adjective and noun from this Latin spelling, which is why the word keeps the single 'v' and the -ia base rather than any German spelling such as Bayern. The dessert sense, as in Bavarian cream, is far younger and simply borrows the regional name to dress up a rich set custard, a common nineteenth-century habit of naming fashionable cooking after places.

How the word is built

• Bavaria (Latin name of the German region, from the Germanic tribe Baiuvarii)
• -an (adjective and noun suffix meaning 'belonging to')