Latin and Greek have their own words for love and attraction—amor and eros, for instance—but these words don't serve as the root of our word "romance." Instead, "romance" comes from the very name of the Latin-speaking people, the Romans. How does the name for a population come to mean something about affection? We consider Jane Austen's Persuasion to help us track the meaning of "romance" from its ancient origins to our modern era.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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