Talk:Alférez

–fer–
The connexion with arms and armour is visible in several Latin synonyms, all of which contain the root fer-, signifying iron: fertorarius, inferartis, and offertor. The office was sometimes the same as that of the standard-bearer or signifer.

In offertor and signifer the root fer is certainly not 'iron' (it's cognate to English bear, the verb), and I'm skeptical about the others, though none are in my Latin dictionary. —Tamfang (talk) 22:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll go further: if the r is not doubled (in Latin), I assume that the morpheme is not related to 'iron'. My dictionary has a bunch of other unrelated fer– words. —Tamfang (talk) 05:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)