German 'duzen' and 'siezen' — etymology?

Recently having written a brief paper for my German
Composition class on the usage of the German
second-person pronouns 'du' and 'Sie', I've been
curious as of late as to the etymology of the verbs
'duzen' and 'siezen'.

At first, I thought they were worn-down compounds with
'tun' — something like *du tun and *Sie tun, but for a
number of reasons, I realized that was probably wrong
— for one, a couple of German sound laws would have to
be violated to make this work; and two, *du tun and
*Sie tun sound _really_ stupid in German.

Can anyone shed some light on this?


	

	
		
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