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Today I realized that the word "Real" in "Real Estate" might be about "royalty" instead of "reality".

English is a foreign language to me, so I don't really know the literal meaning and origin of the term "Real Estate".

Might "Real" be an alternative term for "Royal"?

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Good question! I've always wondered "If we have Real Estate, is there such a thing as Fake Estate or Virtual Estate?" – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner May 1 '12 at 15:05
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It's a good question. I had wondered about that, as well. The words "Real Estate", don't exist in English in the UK. – Tristan May 1 '12 at 15:23
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@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner: We call it property and it's dealt with by estate agents. And Real Tennis does come from "royal". – Andrew Leach May 1 '12 at 15:32
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@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner As Andrew Leach wrote; property. Although, the word estate is used in the UK, accompanied by the word agent. As in, an estate agent. – Tristan May 1 '12 at 15:35
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By "Empire Estate" did you by any chance mean the nickname of New York State "the Empire State"? That is worth a separate question, actually, probably easily googlable. – Mitch May 2 '12 at 21:07
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4 Answers

up vote 14 down vote accepted

The real in real estate (AmE) or real property (BrE) is archaic, meaning of actual or physical things. Real estate is physical property, land and things fixed to the land such as buildings. In contrast, personal property, such as tools or clothing, is not fixed to the land. The Latin root is res, which is generally translated as things.

The alternative theory that the root is rex, i.e. king (from which through various intermediary languages we get royal, regnal, realm, regalia, and so on) does get a lengthy writeup in Wikipedia, however.

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Wow, that article really answers the question on "Real Estate" etymology. Any clue on the "Empire Estate" term? – Sebastián Grignoli May 1 '12 at 15:31
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Americans also use the term "real property", especially in legal documents. I think it's pretty much synonymous with "real estate" but maybe a lawyer would make some technical distinction. It's common in the U.S. to have "real estate taxes" (on land and buildings) and "personal property taxes" (on anything else). These days personal property taxes are generally only imposed on businesses. So the entities that primarily pay personal property taxes are corporations, which seems a bit paradoxical to me. – Jay May 1 '12 at 17:39
Virginia has a "tangible personal property tax," although for individuals it's really just a vehicle tax, with some county-level exemptions the legislature has carved out for flight simulators and homeowners association furniture, among other things. @SebastiánGrignoli, I'm not familiar with any particular "Empire Estate"; a Google search turns up various different buildings and organizations by that name in several different countries. – choster May 1 '12 at 18:59
up vote 5 down vote

This is what I've found on Etymonline real estate

REAL (adj.) early 14c., "real, actually existing, true;" mid-15c., "relating to things" (especially property), from O.Fr. reel, from L.L. realis "actual," from L. res "matter, thing," of unknown origin. Meaning "genuine" is recorded from 1550s; sense of "unaffected, no-nonsense" is from 1847.

Real estate is first recorded 1660s and retains the oldest English sense of the word.

So, according to this source, "real" means "existing, true" as per the Latin origin, but then even the later meaning of "relating to things" seems to derive from the same root (through French).

Minor addition : in Italian the term "reale" has the same double meaning it has in Spanish (royal and real), whereas this is not true for French (royal and réel), although the three languages all derive from Latin...

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+1 particularly for your minor addition. – Carlo_R. May 1 '12 at 20:06
up vote 3 down vote

"Real property", historically, is property such that any legal action regarding it was "in rem", that is "on the matter itself"; this was opposed to "personal property", where any action would be "in personam", that is "on a (mere) physical object".

Thus "real property", in a somewhat paradoxical way to modern thinking, was more "real" because it was sort of abstract.

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up vote 2 down vote

Real estate is the immobile / fixed portion of one’s estate, that is, land. It’s contrasted with the movable portion, that is, objects.

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Thanks! Anyway, I was asking for the literal meaning. "Real" stands for "fixed", "tangible" or something like that? Or does it stand for something related to the kingdom? I know that in feudal times the king owned all the land where people lived. (In spanish the word "Real" might refer to "Reality" but also to "Royalty".) – Sebastián Grignoli May 1 '12 at 15:17
It can also be contrasted with "chattel" – Ben Lee May 7 '12 at 16:04

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