Etymology Dictionary

ALLEY,  a walk.  (F.,—L.)   M.E. aley, alley.   'So long about the aleys is he goon;' Chaucer, C. T. 10198.—O.F. alee, a gallery; a participial substantive.—O.F. aler, alier, to go; mod. F. aller.—Low Lat. anare, to come, arrive; on the change from anare to aner, and thence to aler, see Brachet; cf. F. orphelin from Low Lat. orphaninus.—Lat. adnare, to come, especially to come by water.—Lat. ad, to; and nare, to swim, properly 'to bathe;' cf. Skt. sná, to bathe.—✔SNA, to wash, bathe.  See Benfey, and Fick, i. 828.   ¶ The chief difficulties are (1) the transition from n to l, and (2) the rarity of O.F. aner, to come.   α. However, other instances occur of the assumed change, viz. orphelin, Low Lat. orphaninus (cf. E. orphan); Palerme, Palermo, formerly Panormus; Roussillon, from Lat. acc. Ruscinonem; Bologne, from Lat. Bononia.   β. As to O.F. aner, Diez finds a few clear traces of it; and in Bartsch's Chrestomathie Française, p. 7, it appears in a very old poem on the Passion of Christ; of which the 9th line is 'E dunc orar cum el anned' = and then as He came to pray.   This O.F. aner or anner is clearly the same as Ital. andare, to go, which (according to the above theory) is for Lat. anare or adnare.   [Brachet instances arrive, q.v. as being similarly generalised from the sense of 'coming by water' to that of 'coming.']   γ. Another theory makes the Ital. andare a nasalised form of Lat. aditare, to approach.