Networks and security

The twenty-seventh entry is o nome de domínio, and the noun in the middle of it has a relative in English that nobody would expect on this page. O domínio comes down from Latin dominium, the rights a dominus held over his household — the same dominus that gave Portuguese its everyday o dono, the owner. English took the word twice by the front door, as « domain » through Old French and as « dominion » straight out of the books, and both still mean roughly what the Latin meant. It also took it once by the back. Vulgar Latin built dominiarium on the same stem, Old French wore that down to dangier, and what it named was a lord’s power to do you harm: to be in somebody’s danger was to be at his mercy, and the sense of risk grew out of that afterwards. So « danger » and o domínio are one word wearing two faces, which is a useful thing to know on a page about security — a registrar selling the right to a name is selling exactly what the Latin always said it was.