parish: [13] The etymological notion underlying parish is of ‘living nearby’. It comes via Old French paroisse and late Latin parochia (source of English parochial [14]) from late Greek paroikíā. This was a derivative of pároikos ‘living near’, a compound formed from pará ‘beside’ and oikos ‘house’ (source of English economy).
Scholars have not been able to agree on precisely how the idea of ‘living nearby’ became transmuted into that of the ‘parish’: some consider the central concept to be of a ‘community of neighbours’, while others view the ‘near-dweller’ here not as a permanent neighbour but as a temporary ‘sojourner’ or ‘stranger’, an epithet applied to early Christians. => economy, parochial
