Does the German Word Kaiser come from Caesar

by Zand731
BaffledPlato

Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary (I know it's 'English' but hang on) says that originally we had the Latin Caesar. This entered both Greek and Germanic as kaisar.

In more modern German it evolved into kaiser.

That answers your question, but we can also follow the story further in other languages if you are interested.

From Germanic, it also entered Dutch as keizer, keiser, and keser.

Also (probably) from Germanic it became cesari in Old Church Slavonic and then tsar and czar in Russian.

And still also from Germanic it entered Gothic as kaisar. From there, it made it to Old Norse as keisari, Old Saxon as kesur and kesar, Old Frisian as keisar, and finally Old English as casere.

This process wasn't quite as linear as I portrayed it. The OED says that various languages influenced each other as it evolved.