The Scandinavian word drott refers to an ancient or medieval lord leading a hird (troop) of warriors in battle. The wife of a drott was called drottning, a word still used today in reference to a queen in Scandinavian languages. A development from Proto-Germanic *druhtinaz, drott ultimately derives from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewgʰ- ('to hold fast', 'retain', 'support').
*Dʰrewgʰ- is also the root of Slavic druzhina, the word for a medieval fellowship of warriors in the service of a lord or chieftain, called knyaz; itself believed to derive from Germanic kuningaz (king). Additionally, the Slavic word drug (friend) is also descended from the same *dʰrewgʰ- root.
Linguists date the split of Proto-Indo-European dialects into what would become Germanic and Slavic languages to just before 3000 BC, which is incidentally around the same date geneticists point to as the calculated split of the paternal haplogroup R1a1a (R-M417) into specific Germanic and Slavic subclades. The R1a1a lineage is associated with human remains of the Corded Ware culture, a highly interconnected archaeological horizon where some of the oldest remains of genetically modern North Europeans are found, emerging as mounted warriors from the steppe conquered the North European plain.
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