Talk:Bastard (law of England and Wales)/Archive 1

Time period of the law
A Bastard in the law of England and Wales was a person whose parents, at the time of his birth, were not married to each other. The first sentence should indicate the time period the law was in effect. --Dforest 04:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Its a status designation. In a sense it is still "in effect" and always has been, it just has no legal consequences. Francis Davey 08:25, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The article should state when the legal consequences ended. Jim Michael (talk) 08:54, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, good idea. Please edit if you know the answer. Francis Davey (talk) 20:07, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

"iglet"
As a female form of the word "bastard", "iglet" is stated in the article. Unfortunately, no such word exists in any English dictionary, and the edit was in fact made by a user for which this has been the only edit ever, in some 7 months. I'm going to assume it's another random act of vandalism. John Sheu (talk) 18:15, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Clarification needed
The article doesn't say whether the father must be the biological father.

Offensive?
It would be really good if you could cite some sources indicating that this term was always considered offensive. I have always been under the impression that there was a long period of time when "bastard" was merely a factual term. People might have found the fact of bastardy offensive, and may not have wanted it broadcast, but the word itself was, as far as I know, a merely factual term thoughout the Middle Ages. In much the same way that "gentleman" has been degraded from a factual statement about property ownership into a generic term of praise.

If no sources can be found about this issue, the statement that the term was always offensive should be removed.FideliaE (talk) 05:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Etymology?
Etymology means the history of a word, e.g. what the source words are, the time of the first known appearance of the word in its current form, etc. The Etymology section in this article does not appear to contain any of that information and rather seems just to be a discussion of how sister words are offensive in the modern day. Etymology should be about parent words, not sister words. I would add the appropriate information myself, but I do not know it, which is why I was looking for this article in the first place.

In any case, I fail to see how the fact that the word "bastardo" is currently offensive in Spanish is relevant to the use of the word "Bastard" in the Laws of England and Wales.FideliaE (talk) 05:30, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 5th Edition, gives the following definitions: "(Child)born out of wedlock or of adultery, illegitimate; (of things)unauthorized, hybrid, counterfeit; (Bot.)nearly resembling another species" It derives it from Middle English Old French bast(meaning a packsaddle used by a muleteer as a bed). In what is now Namibia, there is a tribe located round the town of Rehoboth who are known as the Basters, or Bastards. They are descended from unions between early German settlers and the local native women. In the Authorised Version of the Bible "bastard" is a translation of the Hebrew word mamzér In Deuteronomy, chapter 23, verse 2. In Zechariah, chapter 9, verse 6 a "bastard"(AV) - Heb. mamzér - is said to occupy Ashdod. Unfortunately, Georg Fohrer's Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary of the Old Testament does not list a verbal form of the Hebrew word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.64.179 (talk) 23:43, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I have a source for the etymology of the word, and the existing etymology has no source, and nobody has responded do the concerns I mentioned above about sister words (in over a year), so I'm replacing that section with information supported by the source. FideliaE (talk) 22:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)


 * There is yet another account of the origin of fils de bast (though I am at a loss to give its source): that, there being no obvious father, the mother was symbolically wedded to a packsaddle (the symbolism presumably being the intimate link to the saddle's rider, whoever he might be) in lieu of the actual man responsible. On closer inspection, this has the ring of inauthenticity, being of a type with antiquarian's tales of strange goings-on in benighted Europe before the enlightening effect of the Reformation. Nuttyskin (talk) 02:54, 25 January 2018 (UTC)