folk

Folk is a short word with a long history. Though its earlier origins are a matter of conjecture—specifically that folk shares common roots in an earlier language that also led to the Greek plethos and Latin plebes, both referring to the common people—the English roots are long enough. Folc-with-a-C was common in Old English, used alone to refer to "a people, nation, or tribe" and as the root of many compounds including folcland ("land held by freemen according to tribal rules of inheritance"), folcnēd (the people’s need), folcstede (a dwelling place or battleground), folcdaern (an earth house, or a grave), folcgemо̄t (meeting of the people), and folcū (the people’s cow, whatever that might have meant).

Over time almost all of these compounds faded away or were replaced…until the mid-1800s when an antiquarian named William J. Thoms coined the word folklore (lore has an interesting etymology of its own that will have to wait for another time but as a teaser, it has to do with farming and furrows).

Inspired by the work of the Brothers Grimm collecting German fairy tales, Mr. Thoms wrote in a letter to The Athenæum. Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts:

Your pages have [so] often given evidence of the interest which you take in what we in England designate as Popular Antiquities, or Popular Literature (though by-the-bye it is more a Lore than a Literature, and would be most aptly described by a good Saxon compound, Folk-Lore,—(the Lore of the People)

This letter not only resulted in Thomas landing a regular "Folk-Lore" column in The Athenaeum, but triggered a veritable explosion of modern English compound words and phrases we use today, such as folk art, folk rock, folk tales, folk singer and so on, all referring to the arts, crafts and creative output of "the people."

Though Old English had a word folclār that meant homily (a sermon or discourse), it appears that Thoms’ coinage was inspired not by that but by the German of those Brothers Grimm, a language which contained many compounds formed from the German volk (people).

And this is where things get tricky in the collision between dictionary definitions, history, usage and the sometimes overt claim-staking of language evolving practically before our eyes.

In 19th-century Germany, volk, particularly the adjective völkisch, was taken up as part of rallying cries by German nationalists and eventually by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. This history has resulted in volk being controversial in Germany today: some Germans use it innocently to mean the people, others with more sinister intentions to, essentially, retain a kind of plausible deniability while sounding a white nationalist dog whistle. Because of their use by the Nazis, many of the German compounds using volk fell out of favor after World War II, though some on the German right, such as well-known activist and publisher Götz Kubitschek, are explicitly calling for them to be used again because they, as Kubitschek puts it, "create a sense of belonging … and ‘us’ and a ‘not us’."

Beyond being intrinsically intellectually interesting, this matters because the same threads come together and into play—and sometimes into knots—in English today.

On the one hand, "folks" is increasingly being promoted as a gender-neutral plural noun that is more clearly neutral than "guys," less apparently informal than "y’all," less potentially grating on the ears than "peeps," and less mysterious to most than the regional "y’inz." Folks-with-a-K-S also resonates with folx-with-an-x, a construction that originated in 2001 along the lines of Mx. (as a replacement for Ms.) and Latinx (for Latina), where the "x" represents a variable, explicitly signaling a broader inclusivity, including the LGBTQIAPK+ communities.

On the other hand, "folk" can be used as coded language in English just as "volk" is in German. In particular, the Traditional Workers Party, which formed in 2013 and boasted alliances with the Aryan Nationalist Front, the League of the South, and a number of other similarly charming groups, stated that its mission included "defending faith, family, and folk against the politicians and oligarchs who are running America into the ground."

That phrase "faith, family, and folk" (itself derived from a twisted reading of Norse Mythology, but that’s another meander that will have to wait) is a clear invocation of the fascist version of "volk," a clear signal to other racist white nationalists, such as Matthew Heimbach, founder of the Traditionalist Youth Network, a white supremacist organization, who tries to deny the Nazi-associations of his group while saying things like, "Let’s stop worrying about out-Jewing them or outsmarting them. Let’s just stand for what we believe in, which is faith, family and folk — the three things that make us a nation."

This leads to a potential quandary for those of us concerned with—or more accurately in my case, who anxiously agonize over—things like inclusive language. Beyond the more common objection that "folks" is too, well, folksy and so potentially insulting or dismissive (though it’s painfully amusing to watch the contortions of the same people who decried former President Obama’s fondness for the word "folk" working overtime to justify its use by Heimbach and friends) I’ve witnessed conversations where some discomfort has been expressed about the possibility of being tainted by an unintended association with hate groups.

Personally, I’ve found the simplest alternative to the "guys" I grew up with is to simply omit the group address altogether. When that won’t work, and when a horrific form of address like "tweeps" isn’t appropriate, I’m sticking with folks (with an X or not, listener’s choice) because I’m unwilling to cede this particular linguistic ground to the white nationalist alt-right or whatever label such groups of ignoramuses are going by this week.