Tag: Fun Etymology

Hello everyone! It’s Tuesday and there’s a new Fun Etymology waiting for you fresh from the HLC Etymology Factory.

This week we’ll explore our next-to-last country name (for now), homeland of our own Rebekah: “America”!

America is one of the most recent places to have been named, so its etymology is known for certain. It is not named after a tribe or some geographical feature, but after a person.
That person is the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who lived in the 15th century and was the first to recognise America as a new continent, and not just a collection of islands, which is what Christopher Columbus thought it was (too bad, Chris. But at least you get a country in South America named after you). The word “America” comes from a Latinisation of his name, “Americus”.
The name “Amerigo” itself is Germanic in origin, probably from Gothic “Amalrich”, or “work-ruler”. It survives in English today in the surname “Emmerich”.

Fun fact: if America were named after Amerigo Vespucci’s surname instead, we would have to talk about the United States of Vesputia!

Tjena! Hej! Hallå! It’s fun etymology time!
Since we’re on the subject of names for nations and people, we thought it was appropriate to include the motherland of 50% of the HLC: Sweden.

The road to this name takes some interesting turns. Essentially, the name was borrowed from Middle Dutch and Low German (‘Zweden/Sweden’), where it probably was a dative plural of ‘Swede’. It was, however, not borrowed into English; the form first appears in Scots in the 1500s, as ‘Swethin’/’Suethin’/’Swadne’ etc. (consistent spelling was not a thing back then, as our regular readers will know).

In Old English, the name for Sweden was ‘Sweoland’ or ‘Sweorice’ (‘rice’ basically meant ‘country’ so this makes sense (cf. German ‘reich’)). This was adapted from the Old Norse ‘Sviariki’ (app. “land of the Swedes”), which developed into the Modern Swedish form ‘Sverige’, pronounced /’sværjɛ/, through various phonological changes (the more archaic ‘Svea Rike’ also survives in Modern Swedish, used in certain contexts).
The ‘Sweo’-part comes from Old Norse ‘Sweon’ (pl.; Modern Swedish ‘Svear’) which is the name for one of the North-Germanic tribes who lived in Sweden at least from the viking ages, but probably earlier, and onwards.

In English, the Scots form ‘Sweden’ then started to be used as the name for the people, not the country, in the early 17th century:
“Another part [of their country is] usurped..by the Swedens.”
(attested 1613, example from the OED)

Phew, did you follow that? Basically, the name ‘Sweden’ came to English through Scots, where it had been borrowed from Dutch and German – it is unclear when this form started to be used for the country in English, but forms of ‘Swed(e)land’ are used up until the 18th century (while ‘Sweden’-forms are used as a name for the country in Scots from the start).

With that, this Swede signs off!

Hello, my good followers! How’s it going?

It’s Wednesday, and, a day late (and not a minute too soon), we present to you our latest Fun Etymology!

Today we complete our little exploration of the British Isles with the word “Irish”!

The word “Irish”, from Old English “Iras”, was brought to our language by the Vikings, of all people. It is a loanword from the Old Norse “Irar”. Why the Vikings, who came from the exact opposite side of the sea from where Ireland is located?
Well, at the time, the Vikings had a… ahem… special relation with Ireland, in that they had raided it multiple times and establish numerous settlements there.
Their word “Irar” itself comes from Old Irish “Eriu”, the name they gave themselves, from Old Celtic “Iveriu”. This is thought to come from the PIE root *pi-wer-, meaning “fertile”, or “fat”, probably referring to the notoriously verdant island they settled.

If you know an Irishman (or if you are one), maybe you could consider adopting the name “Fertile Ones” for a bit of flattery.

Just don’t call them “fatties”, please.

Good evening, loyal friends!
It’s Tuesday and, as regular as clockwork, our new Fun Etymology is out!
In our ongoing series about country/language names we’re going to explore another one of the constituents of the United Kingdom: Wales!

We wanted to do Scotland first but sadly nobody knows where the word Scotland (or better, Scot, the name of the
Celtic tribe giving its name to the land) comes from! That would have been a very short Fun Etymology indeed.

The word “Welsh”, by contrast, has a very rich and curious history.
It comes from the Old English word “wielisc” or “wælisc”, meaning “foreigner”.
This word comes from the Proto-Germanic word *walkhiskaz, which was used to signify any non-Germanic foreigner. The result of this is that there have been many “Welshes” along the ages: to the Vikings, the “Valir” were the French, to the old High Germans, the “Walh” were the Romans.
The Proto-Germanic word comes from the name of a Celtic tribe which lived in the Alps in northern Italy, known in Latin as the “Volcae”.

So, the name of a Celtic tribe came to mean “foreigner” in proto-Germanic, and then Old English extended this meaning to become the name of another Celtic tribe only remotely related to the one which originated the word in the first place!

Such is the way of the world.

Hello hello hello, good friends!
It’s Tuesday, and long tradition dictates a new Fun Etymology is waiting for you, fresh and crispy!

Today’s word is the first in a mini-series we’ll be doing in the following weeks about country and language names, and where else to begin if not with our own lovely English?

The word “English” comes from Old English “Englisc”, the adjectival form of the noun “Engle”, which is the name the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who came to Great Britain and colonised it in the fifth century AD, called themselves.

Now you might think the word Angle sounds suspiciously the same as the word “angle”, i.e. what you get when two lines intersect, but they couldn’t possibly be related, could they?

Well, it turns out that they are! The Angles named themselves after their original homeland Angul, located on the Jutland peninsula in what is now the German state of Schleswig-Holstein (how cool are German state names, by the way?). The name Angul comes from Proto-Germanic *angul, “hook”, which itself comes from the PIE root *ank- “to bend”, which gave us the words “angle” and “ankle” (the part of the foot that bends), amongst others. They called their land that way because it sort of looks like a fish hook.

Another interesting aspect of this word is that by all accounts it should be pronounced “Anglish”, not at all how it is pronounced today. The explanation for this irregularity is that by the 14th century, the sound “e” before “ng” had become very rare, and the influence of the far more common “ing” combination resulted in the pronunciation shifting that way.
In some Middle English and Scots texts, the spelling “Inglis”, which reflects the modern pronunciation, can be found relatively frequently, but over time the archaic spelling prevailed, and here we are.

So, my dear Fish Hook People and other Fish Hook Language speakers, let me wish you a very nice week while you wait for our next foray into the history of words.

Friends and followers, welcome one and all to a brand new Fun Etymology!

Today’s word is one of my favourite things in the world: “book”.

Books are the closest thing we humans have to actual magic, as Carl Sagan once said. We have found a way to encode our thoughts into shapes we can draw and thereby preserve them for millennia.
Think about it: when you read Plato or Confucius or Caesar, you’re listening to the thoughts of someone who’s been dead for thousands of years, exactly as he expressed them. If that’s not sorcery I don’t know what is.

The word “book” comes from Old English “boc”, itself from Proto-Germanic *bokiz, meaning “beech” (from which the word “beech” also comes, predictably). This refers to the ancient custom amongst Germanic peoples of carving runes on the bark of beech trees, particularly suited to writing due to their white colour.
This is not unique of Germanic. The Latin word “librum”, from which come Italian “libro” and French “livre”, amongst others, itself originally meant “inner bark of a tree”.

So thank a tree on your way to the park today, for they give us not only the oxygen we breathe, but the means of preserving our thought and our wisdom through the centuries.

What do the magazines you find in the supermarket, full of gossip or specialist information, have to do with old buildings storing grain and dates in ancient Arabia?

Well, the word “magazine” ultimately comes from the Quranic Arabic word “makhzan”, meaning “storehouse, depot”, a form of the verb “khazana”, “to store”.
This was borrowed into Italian as “magazzino”, where it still has its original meaning of “storehouse”. Later, French brought the word to English, where its meaning of “storehouse” was metaphorically transferred to paper with the publication of the “Gentleman’s Magazine” in 1730, with the intended meaning of “storehouse of information”.

This metaphorical meaning supplanted the original and is now the primary one, the old meaning having survived only in military jargon, referring to the capsules storing ammunition for firearms.

Eala, folcgestællan!

It’s Tuesday, and, as per long tradition, we have a Fun Etymology ready for you!

This week’s words are of noble stock: “lord” and “lady”.

These two noble titles, ubiquitous in films set in Ye Olde Merrie Englande, have surprisingly lowly origins: they both have to do with bread.

The word “lord” comes from old English “hlaford”, itself a contraction of “hlafweard”, literally “loaf-ward”, or “bread protector”, while the word “lady” comes from “hlæfdige”, which could be rendered as “loaf-dey”, or “bread kneader” (though it must be noted that this last etymology is disputed by the OED. However, nobody seems to have a better one, so there).

So the lady made the bread, while the lord stood there with his sword on the ready should any bread thieves dare tamper with their nutritious wheat derivate.

As an Italian, though, I must say that ladies were apparently not too good at making bread, considering the flaccid, sweetish mess English bread ended up being. No “hlafþeóf” would be interested in that.

Perhaps that’s why lords and ladies ended up moving on from baking to the far more profitable business of oppressing peasants.

Hello peepz!
It’s Tuesday and, as usual, it’s time for our regular appointment with words and their wacky histories!

Today’s word is a word nobody likes to be called: “hypocrite”.

We’ve probably seen many of this kind of people in our lives (*cough*politicians*cough*), and we all know what they are: people who say one thing and do the opposite, who preach well but do wrong.

It’s no wonder then that the word comes from the Ancient Greek “hypocrites”, meaning “stage actor”.
This word is itself a nominal form of the verb “hypokrinesthai”, a compound of the words “hypo-“, ‘under’, and the middle voice (sort of like a reflexive) of the verb “krinein”, ‘to discriminate, separate’. So “self-under-separation”, if you like, or, in plain English, to separate yourself from your true self; i.e. playing a part.

Don’t be actors, people. Do what you say you do.

People of the netz!
It is Fun Etymology day, and I know you’ve been waiting for this, so let’s get started!

Today’s word is “coffee”.

Ah, coffee. Some people swear they couldn’t live without it, others, like me, only drink it occasionally.

The coffea arabica plant, from which the coffee seeds are taken, is native of Ethiopia and Yemen, from which it was brought to Europe in the 1500. In fact, Yemen became so rich from the export of coffee that its laws decreed that no living plant or seed could be taken out of the country, in order to protect the monopoly they had.
When it arrived in France and England in the late 1590s, it sparked what can only be called a coffee mania, with more than 3000 coffee houses opened in England alone by 1670. These places were a popular meeting place for intellectuals and philosophers, because they offered a more egalitarian atmosphere from the clubs and universities of the time.

The word “coffee” is a borrowing from Arabic “qahwah”, itself of uncertain origin, filtered through Turkish “kahveh” and Italian “caffè”.
Some say the word originally meant “wine”, others that it comes from the Ethiopian region of Kaffa, one of the homelands of this incredible plant.

Whatever the origins of its name, we can all agree that love it or hate it, the world would not be the same without this black, powerful beverage.