I’m not saying that we should chuck the word “parliament”, but I would like to point out a few things.
First, it was borrowed from French as parlement. That pesky <i> that no-one, but the worst pedants, actually says. This is another case where we changed the spelling to fit with the Latin: parliamentum. So let’s drops the <i>, honestly.
Second, this word came into English as a direct result of 1066 and all that. So we might wanna chuck it altogether.
The word parliament just means “a talking”. Well, how about “talking shop”?
It we want to get all Tolkien-y, Parliament is literally the nation-wide council. Thus, land(s)moot fits well — that is, the moot (assembly) of the land (that is, country). Alternatively, as this is a democracy (sort of), (all)folk(s)moot fits quite well. County Council would become shire(s)moot, and local borough councils would change likewise: borough(s)moot. Then we have town(s)moot and so on where needed. To spell it out, moot means “council” or “assembley” (it’s related to the verb “meet”).
The Old English parliament, such as it was, was called the witenagemot (witena + gemot: literally, “wise(men’s)moot”. Wisemoot or Witsmoot might work as a new English form. Historically, we often call it the witan for short.
Parliament is made up of the King or Queen, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. Perhaps we can call this The Folk House.
In Dutch, Swedish, Frisian, they use the French word parliament — although spelt the French not Latin way. In Norwegian they call it the “Big Thing” and in Icelandic the “All Thing”; “thing” used to mean “assembly, council” and the older meaning is still hinted at in the English husting: house-thing.
Members of parliament are surely those who meet in parliament. So following Swedish, we could call them Leadmeeter or Meeters.
© 2018-2020 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/House_of_Commons_2010.jpg/1200px-House_of_Commons_2010.jpg
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