Of leaders and rulers

  The words related to government and rulers are usually formed out of two roots “-cracy” and “-archy”, almost respectively.

 

Derived from the Ancient Greek “arkhein”, and Latinized as “-archy”, it means “the first”, and thus in classic metaphorical fashion, “to rule”. The study of anything related to those who were early enough to be first is called archaeology. The sacred ritual that was supposed to be performed first while worshipping Dionysus, was called “ta hiera”. It only took a few thousand years for it to mean anything performed first in order, in “hierarch” which means the head priest; and a few thousand more, for it to mean any rank in an order, or a sense of organization, in “hierarchy”. With that aside, we move on to words which stay true to their primitivity in patriarchy (rule by a father-figure, or male), monarchy (“mono” is “one”), and even hagiarchy (“hagi” means holy”). In turn, the person in rule in those respective settings becomes a patriarch, monarch and hagiarch.

 

The Latinized form of Ancient Greek “-kratia”, is “-cracy”, which means “rule or power”. It gives us words like democracy (rule by citizens), aristocracy (rule by best citizens) and autocracy (rule by I, the citizen). Others like gerontocracy (old people), bureaucracy, idiocracy and androcracy follow.

 

Interestingly, most of the roots used with “-archy” are also acceptable with “-cracy”. It is just another example of when English stops being Greek, and Latin and French, and starts being English. However, the nuance lies in the difference between the concepts of “ruling” and “governing”. The rule by rich people is plutarchy, but a government by rich people is plutocracy (Pluto was the Roman God of riches). Go do with that what you will.