Resumen de Barlaam et Josaphat ou l’asymptote étymologique
The medieval transmission of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, Christian adaptation of the life of Buddha through Western literature is now well known. In the last decades, scholars have studied the text’s millenary translatio, corrected the wrong attribution to John of Damascus in favour of Euthymius the Athonite, and showed the narrative potential of this collection of tales and its influence on the development of Western vernacular literature in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. Nevertheless, very little is known so far about the origin of the protagonists’ names: where do the names Barlaam and Josaphat come from? Are they «etymological doublets» derived from the name of Buddha as some seem to allege, or not? This article, written by a linguist specialist of etymology and a medievalist interested in Barlaam and Josaphat, investigates some of the many influences that the legend has crossed and to which it could have borrowed its protagonists’ names
