Troubador

The literates in French argue that the root of the word can be found in the langue d'oc verb trobar, 'to compose, invent, or devise'. (see all French Dictionnaries Académie Française, Larousse, Robert). Others posit an Arabic origin in the word tarrab, 'to sing' (see María Rosa Menocal: The culture of translation).

Some proponents of the second theory argue, on cultural grounds, that both etymologies may well be correct, and that there may have been a conscious poetic exploitation of the phonological coincidence between trobar and the triliteral Arabic root TRB when sacred Islamic (sufi) musical forms focused on the love theme were first exported from Al-Andalus, i.e. Moorish (Islamic) Spain, to Southern Europe. It has also been pointed out that the concepts of "finding", "music", "love", "ardour", i.e. the precise semantic field attached to the word troubadour, are allied in Arabic under a single root (WJD) that plays a major role in sufic discussions of music, and that the word troubadour may in part reflect this.[4]
The word troubadour is used to designate poet-musicians who spoke the langue d'oc; their style spread to the trouvères in the north of France, who spoke langues d'oïl. This other form is really similar to the French verb trouver meaning to find, outpointing the relevance of the Latin etymology.