Bell (instrument and signaling device)

"Bell" goes back to Middle Latin clocca (cloca, glogga, gloccus) "bell" or Old Irish cloc(c) "bell, bell". The Celtic word, for its part, may ultimately derive from an early Romance *culticulare (derived from Latin quatere, excutere "to shake, strike, shake"); according to another view, the word is onomatopoeic, and according to a third it goes back to the Indo-European root *kel(ə)- "to call, shout, make noise, sound" and would thus be cognate with Latin clangere "to resound". In any case, Irish missionaries who wandered through Europe carried handbells, thus making the word known on the continent. Later it was transferred to the large church bells and thus entered the West and North Germanic languages as well as some Romance languages, compare for example Old High German glocca, clocca, Old English clucge (New English clock "watch", on the other hand, was brought to England from Dutch by Flemish watchmakers), Dutch klok, Danish klokke, Swedish klocka, French cloche, Provençal cloka. Some such Irish-English bells are still preserved today, besides being depicted several times in the sacramentary of Gellone (of the monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert founded at the end of the 8th century).

In the Romance languages Italian and Spanish the word for "bell" is campana, in Portuguese campainha means "door bell". It goes back to late Latin campāna, which actually means "Campanian" or is shortened from "Campanian bronze device", compare Latin campānum "brazen vessel". The southern Italian landscape of Campania was known for its ore deposits. The word is first attested by Isidore of Seville.

Another type of word is the classical Latin signum "sign", meaning "bell sign", which in Old French as sin(g) or sein(g) and still today in Portuguese as sino carries the meaning "bell". The phrase signum dare "to give a sign" as a call to the assembly of monks has come down to us from the Egyptian monastic founder Pachomios (c. 292-346). In Gaul this formula is attested in the early 6th century as signo tacto, a rule for nuns by Caesarius of Arles, who was an important archbishop. Bishop Gregory of Tours mentioned in the second half of the 6th century a signum which was set in motion with a rope at the beginning of the service and generally at the "canonical hours" (Latin: horae canonicae), i.e. at the monks' hourly prayers. This obviously meant a bell. Until the 10th/11th century, bells were often called signum. Signum ecclesiae was the official name of the Catholic Church for bell.

The origin of English bark (Old English belle, also for the bell of a wind instrument) is uncertain. The word originally comes from Low German and could belong to Low German bellen "to roar". Old and New Icelandic bjalla "small bell, bell, bell" (cf. New Norwegian bjølle, Danish bjælde "small bell, bell") is borrowed from Old English or at least closely related to it.

According to Sachs, the Middle Latin nola for "little bell", which first occurs in the 4th century in Avienus, should be called nolana as a diminutive form if it were derived from names of the city. Instead, he considers nola to be a reduction of the word campanola, the root of which has been dropped, similar to cello by shortening violoncello to violone. The origin of Latin tintinnabulum is unclear. It is in use as a small bell in the Catholic rite.

The Slavic word - for instance Czech hlahol, Russian kolokol - derives from the Old Slavic stem klakol, which is possibly related to Greek karkairo "to roar". The word is ultimately possibly onomatopoeic.

The ancient Greek word for bell is κώδων kṓdōn and for bell κωδώνιον kōdṓnion. It also denoted at that time the bell-shaped bell of the trumpet (σάλπιγξ sálpinx).

• List of bell museums
• List of bell foundries
• Church bell casting
• Bell carving
• List of bells in Germany