I have (of course) been reading your discussions about how to setup SqF and the word "bylaws" got my attention. I have never heard/seen it before but I guessed it must come from the nordic languages.
Swedish:
by = village lag = law
And there is actually a word "byalag" in Swedish. (all this seems to exist similarly in Norwegian)
So it seems to mean "village law". After checking with Merriam-Webster I conclude my guess was semi-correct, "bylaw" seems to indeed stem from the scandinavian word "byalag". But there is more to learn here.
In Swedish the word "lag" both means "law" and "team"/"group of people". I would guess (yes, a guess - I may be wrong) that the meaning of the word "lag" (as in "law") evolved from "byalag", because it seems to me that "byalag" in the beginning referred to a "team of men from the village" that got together when something needed to be done that required cooperation - like putting a roof on a house or something.
It wouldn't surprise me if the "will" of this team more and more turned into "rules" of the village. So perhaps that is how the word lag (as in "law") came about.
Ok, now you can all smack me in the head and explain to me that it actually came from Swahili or something. :-)
regards, Göran