What’s in a name?

The name pretzel, or bretzel in German, comes from the Old High German brezita, brezin, brezta and brezitella and Middle High German brezel and prezel.

It is possibly connected to the Latin bracteatus, meaning gilded or shining like gold, or the medieval Latin brachitella and bracchialis, meaning folded arms or bracelet. Digging further, there is pretium, which translates to price or reward, because these breads were often used as alms or handed out at festivities. As the pretzel is centuries old, there could be various sources for the name. Yet the Dutch name, krakeling, isn’t linguistically related to any of the Latin words, not even to bretzel, unless you count variations on the Middle Dutch brootjen or brotchen (meaning ‘little bread’).