A Man’s Bungalow, Cottage, Home, Hut, Mansion . . . Is His Castle

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

“’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,/Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” —John Howard Payne

“I in my own house am an emperor/And will defend what’s mine.” —Massinger

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—2/28/11—Climbing down from a tree or leaving a cave put man to the task of finding or building a dwelling place. Not only that, he must name what he built. And here the story becomes interesting, largely because the names given proved quite fluid and transportable. Space limits and my ignorance of many terms for dwellings outside English dictate a selective treatment here.

Had he not been so linguistically inventive, abode—“ a place to dwell or abide”—might have been good enough, even if architecturally various. And had he not moved around and seen dwellings other than his own and learned their names, something as simple as home, from Old English for “a dwelling place,” would have sufficed.

The Old English home or house probably reflects a step forward to more permanent and costly dwellings than the Old Germanic hutte, a term denoting a crudely, cheaply, and often hastily built dwelling suitable for temporary use.

But, as in the cases of bungalow and cottage, as we’ll see, hut can now denote a large and expensive building, for example, a mountain retreat.

Bungalow, a Hindu term for a dwelling (bangla) deriving from Bengali, in its earliest uses in English described a cheaply constructed house of one story and was used as a synonym for hovel. As the word spread through many lands, it came to imply a wide range in terms of construction costs and pretty much lost all associations with crude structures except insofar as applied to vacation dwellings alongside British seaside resorts. In India and Pakistan, the term now often applies to splendid, expensive dwellings.

The use of cottage to denote expensive houses in such affluent places as Newport, Rhode Island, represents a surprising linguistic leap, something akin to what happened with bungalow. For, originally, the term, deriving from Middle English and associated with hut, denoted the dwelling of a cotter and applied to a structure housing animals, grain, and humans. A kind of compound, in other words. The word became detached from its earlier denotations and spread to cover single dwellings, often expensive in cost and often situated in resort areas. Before the oncoming of multi-unit accommodation for the traveling public, the term had widespread usage as a denotation of detached sleeping quarters for tourists.

One term holding firm to both its denotation and connotation is shack. Apparently deriving from the Aztec word xacallli, it denotes a small, dilapidated, and cheaply constructed building; sadly, according to one estimate, the type housing one billion people worldwide. Who among all the inhabitants of such ruinous places would ever sing, “Be it e’ er so humble, there’s no place like home”?

Who among them would proudly proclaim, “A man’s shack is his castle”? Castle, from the Latin castellum, both connotes and denotes a stronghold, a dwelling providing security and a sense of well-being. These are the associations behind the widespread saying and conviction that a man’s home is his castle. It is a term freighted with little or no troublesome ambiguity.

Not so mansion, which came into English by way of the French tongue, ultimately linking back to Latin and Greek terms for remaining or dwelling. In Roman times, a mansio was a stopping place along a Roman road, a place where officials were housed and from which they exercised their power. In time, the word came to denote large, imposing structures.

In a move to cement that denotation, American realtors use the term to refer to dwellings comprising at least 8,000 square feet. In recent times, smaller structures with pretensions to grandeur have been labeled MacMansions. In an era of conspicuous consumption, when developers plop down houses much too large for the lots on which they are situated, these residential sore thumbs often display a tacky show of wealth (or good credit scores).

In theological matters, mansion, deriving from a Greek word meaning “to dwell” or “to abide,” has provoked much discussion and debate, having been rendered quite differently by biblical translators. Perhaps the best known translation is that of the King James Bible in John 14:2. “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if [it were] not [so],I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

The context of the term is Jesus’s assurance to his disciples that he will not be eternally separated from them, his goal upon leaving being to prepare a home for them.

But the denotative and connotative implications of mansion raised questions. For example, did the spaciousness suggested by the term mean that Jesus implied that heaven would be open to people of all faiths? Could it also be used to grant a heavenly home to those worthy pagans who lived the good life and so didn’t merit eternal roasting? If the answer was yes, how square that position with Jesus’s further statement in John 14:6? “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”

A trimming down of the available space in heaven might be gained by using terms other than “mansion.” Among other renderings by biblical translators are “rooms,” “dwelling places,” “resting places, “ homes,” “many abodes,” “rooms enough,” and “enough room.” (See http://biblecc/john/14-2.htm for the range of interpretations of the passage.)

The force of such trimming could be made to buttress the Christian belief that heaven is open only to followers of Jesus. (For a conservative view, see http://www.catholicdoors.com/misc/apologetics/fathershouse.htm, which presents a theological examination of the text.)

Whether terms for housing involve weighty matters of faith or simply signify a place to stretch a mat or hang a hat, interesting details come to the fore about human habitations and man’s attitude towards them. They reveal cultural and spiritual beliefs, transference of techniques and styles, and fascinating shifts in meaning.

There’s a veritable linguistic and ideological feast for anyone willing to look homeward.