Few English words are filled with the emotional meaning of the word “home.” It brings to mind one's childhood, the roots of one's being, the security of a private enclave where one can be free and in control of one's life. The idea of home seems to express such basic and universal human needs that it comes as a surprise to realize that many other European languages have no words with the same connotations. In Italian, for instance, casa is the nearest equivalent, yet it is much closer in meaning to “house” than to “home.” The same is even truer of the French maison, and by the time one gets to the Hungarian ház, the references are almost exclusively to the physical structure rather than to the emotional space. Of course, lexicality is not a sure indication of the psychological significance of a concept. Yet the availability of a word with shared meaning makes it easier to experience that meaning in everyday life. In all langauges there are circumlocutions that convey the psychological meaning of “home,” but these are often somehow awkward and not commonly used. The Italian “focolare,” literally “hearth,” or “fireplace,” is the closest poetic metonym, but it is practically never used in speech. The Hungarian otthon, meaning loosely “place of origin,” is more commonly used in the same sense as the French chez nous, but neither one has the concreteness and the wide-ranging content of “home.”