Where “Troubador” Comes From.

“…the poets to whom we owe this art called themselves by specific terms that, in Occita, French, Italian, and Spanish, are derived from the verbs trobad, trouver, trovare, trovar, and go back to musical composition (from the medieval Latin tropare ‘to make tropes’, a trope being “a newly composed text with music added to an established liturgical chant.”

(Akehurst, F., and Judith Davis. A Handbook of the Troubadours. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. pg. 12, 13.)