Joan Coromines

Who was Joan Coromines?

Joan Coromines i Vigneaux was a linguist who made important contributions to the study of Catalan, Spanish and other Romance languages.

His main works are the Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, which investigates the origin of most words in the Catalan language, the Onomasticon Cataloniae, documenting place and person names, old and new, in all the Catalan-speaking territories, and the Diccionario Crítico Etimológico Castellano e Hispánico. Following this research, he made key contributions to the study of the Basque language´s geographical extent across the Pyrenees during the Early Middle Ages along with Koldo Mitxelena.

Coromines studied at the University of Barcelona, and started working on linguistics from an early age. At the same time, he held strongly Catalanist convictions all his life. He was forced into exile after the Spanish Civil War, eventually holding a professorship at the University of Chicago, in 1948. He returned to Catalonia later, and spent his last years working on his main works, the Etymological Dictionary and the Onomasticon.