Gotama

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The title of the historical founder of Buddhism, a teacher who lived in ancient India ; a name borne by a Vedic sage and the family or clan descended from him
2. Another name for Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher revered as the founder of Buddhism ; a surname shared by an ancient Indian sage lineage associated with the Vedas
3. The name of the enlightened teacher who founded Buddhism in northern India ; a clan name linked with a famous Vedic seer and his descendants

Etymology: Gautama is the family name of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and in Sanskrit "gautama" is a patronymic: a name that marks descent from a founding ancestor rather than a personal name in the Western sense. Its root is "gotama," the word for the lineage itself, and the Buddha's clan took its name from it. The form "gotama" is simply the variant spelling that keeps the older, unlengthened vowel, so it shows up in Pali and in many transliterations of the Buddha's name. English took the word directly from Sanskrit "gautama," so it arrived as a borrowing from a religious tradition rather than through the Latin or French channels that shaped most of the vocabulary. Its sense has stayed narrow: outside Buddhist and Indological writing it names the Buddha and nothing else.