Liber: the analogy

by JLS
for the GC

http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg14.html

"Liberty" derives from Latin libertas, from liber, "free." A curious aspect of this word is that Romans used liberi (plural) to mean "children." The French linguist Émile Benveniste explains this on the basis of a Roman marriage formula, which gave the procreation of more free persons as the purpose of marriage ("to obtain free [beings]"). Such children would be free as members of a class or community of free persons (as opposed to slaves). What are the wider connections of liber? It seems the word arises from common Indo-European *leudhos, from which came Greek eleutheros, "free," as in Eleutherian. There is an allied verb in Germanic: Gothic luidan and Old English leodan, meaning "to grow." German Leute, "people," stems from this verb, as did Old English leod, which lives on in poetry as "leed. ... Hence, the original or ur-meaning had to do with growth, specifically the growth of a kin group, within which one was free."