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In English "Google" has become a verb meaning "to search using Google". In Finnish the name "Google" is not a valid verb, so it has been modified to "googlata" which is conjugated regularly. How should I derive such a verb in Latin?

I want a single word, not circumlocutions like "to search using Google" or "use Google". The core of the question is to decide the most suitable way to derive a verb from a noun. Therefore examples of attested derivatives of similar nature and then generalization to the present situation would be the best way to answer.

My own intuition is to form the first-conjugation verb googlare, but I'm not sure if this is the most Latinate choice and I don't have evidence beyond my intuition.

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  • FWIW, in Spanish it's googlear, -ear being the most common way (though not the only one) of regularly verbalizing a substantive. This, despite -ar being enough for a verb ending (from Latin -are)
    – Rafael
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 12:57
  • I wonder if that mechanism has its roots in Latin
    – Rafael
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 13:04

2 Answers 2

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I can think of many ways of going about this, but for such an unapologetically modern idea I think the best approach may be to observe how other related modern languages have solved this problem and extrapolate how a similar transformation might work.

  • Spanish: googlear
  • Portuguese: googlar
  • Italian: googlare

French, though, seems to be a hold-out: I have only heard "chercher sur/avec Google."

By analogy with Italian, then, my proposal is: googlo, -are, -avi, -atus.

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  • Do Spanish, Portuguese and Italian pronounce the 'goog' bit like English? In Welsh, the verb is "gwglo", -o/-io normal verbal ending, 'w' = [u/u:]. So would "gūglare" be better in Latin? Wouldn't Romans read "Googlare" as "Gōglare"?
    – Paulus Filius Rogeri
    Commented May 7, 2020 at 12:42
  • It depends on how rigorously phonetic they were with their spellings for loanwords. Most actual Romans weren't proscriptivist Latin teachers. I agree, though: gōglō or gūglō.
    – lly
    Commented Jun 11, 2023 at 12:36
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    "googler" is very common in French
    – user12055
    Commented Jun 17, 2023 at 11:39
  • googlear is non even a Spanish word, like it is not in english.
    – Dolphínus
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 16:03
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Mr Pck's answer was well considered and I agree with the approach. As Rogerides noted above, however, Latin isn't really all that happy with the oo bit of the name. Per the current approach at Vicipaedia, it seems like the default would be to use guglo or gugulo, -are, -avi, -atum to better reflect Latin orthography.

I know OP said he wasn't interested but—just to save other people the googling—talking about this the French way would most simply produce ablative Gugula paired somehow with quaero, -rere, -sivi, -situm.

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    In French we do say "googler"
    – user12055
    Commented Jun 17, 2023 at 11:40

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