Category: Fun Etymology

Hello, good people of the nets! It is Tuesday and in the best HLC tradition, I bring to you today’s Fun Etymology!

Today’s word is “gym”!

The gym: some weird people love it. As an academic, I find it an unsettlingly hellish mire of sweat and uncomfortable clothing where people go to voluntarily subject themselves to torture through astonishingly inventive implements. Though I’m told it’s actually good for you. Personally, I prefer a good long walk in the countryside, or, if you have them, mountains.

Oh well, no accounting for taste, I guess. Or, as Caesar used to say, “de gustibus non disputandum est”.

Speaking of classical antiquity, do you know who was REALLY into gyms? The Ancient Greeks, that’s who! In fact, they invented them!
The ideal Greek was at the same time a philosopher and a sports person, busting once and for all the myth that nerds and jocks are incompatible categories. In fact, many of the most famous Greek philosophers started their careers as sportsmen: Plato, whose real name was Aristocles, was a wrestler, and his nickname means “the broad-shouldered”; Chrysippus, one of the founders of the Stoic school, was a long-distance runner; and Eratosthenes, the man who first measured the size of the Earth, was a gymnast.

Our modern word “gym” is the abbreviation of the word “gymnasium”, which comes from the Ancient Greek “gymnasion”, from the verb “gymnazein”, literally “to train naked”, from the word “gymnos”, “naked”.
This reflects the attitude the Ancient Greeks had towards physical exercise, where clothing was seen as an impediment and a shameful covering of the athlete’s body.

Thank Zeus that’s not the case in modern gyms anymore!

Hello, followers of all ages and none (timeless entities welcome)!
It’s Tuesday and your internal calendar has probably adjusted to our schedule enough by now that you don’t need me to tell you it’s time for another Fun Etymology!

This week’s word is one of my favourites: “museum”!

Museums are temples. Temples to knowledge, to curiosity, to discovery. There are no bad museums. Even small or impossibly niche museums are beautiful and important, yes, even the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, or the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum.
All knowledge is precious, and none deserves to be lost.

Which is why it’s sad to see so many museums around the world close or be forced to sell part of their collections because money more readily flows towards “important” stuff such as making weapons or paying politicians.

None understood the sacredness of museums better than the Ancient Greeks, from whom the word actually comes to us. The word “museum” comes from the Ancient Greek “mouseion”, which indicated a school, an exhibition or a place of learning, but, most importantly, a temple to the Muses, from whose name the word actually stems.
The Muses were the ancient Greek goddesses of art and science, daughters of Zeus and the goddess Mnemosyne. Their name comes from the PIE root *men- “to think”.

Traditionally, there are nine of them: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (music and song), Erato (love poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymns and agriculture), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy).

So, next time you go to a museum, remember to treat it like the sacred space it is, and soak in the decades of learning and curiosity that went into its making.
It’s one of the best things we humans have.

Well met, followers all! It’s Tuesday, and the Ancient and Sacred Texts mandate that we write a Fun Etymology for you, our lovely audience.

This week’s word is a favourite: “beer”!

Ah, beer. Beverage of the gods. Loved by all Germanic peoples everywhere.
This fermented barley drink is the oldest recipe known to humanity: it dates back to the Sumerians! Some scholars even believe agriculture was invented because of a pressing human need to produce more booze.
Before the 18th century, beer was the primary beverage for most of Europe, because water was far too dangerous to drink. When the first techniques of water purification were invented, it was such a novelty that the rich hosted parties where they would invite other posh people to taste water.

The word itself is of uncertain origin. It has a cognate in German “Bier”, but in no other Germanic language, where the original Germanic word, cognate to English “ale”, is ubiquitous.
Some linguists think the word was borrowed by West Germanic monks in the 6th century from the Latin word “bibere”, meaning “drink”. Others trace its origins to Proto-Germanic *beuwo-, meaning “barley”.

When Germanic tribes invaded what was left of the Roman Empire, the word was borrowed back into Italian and French, where it survives as “birra” and “bière”, respectively, supplanting the Latin word “cerevisia”, which survives in Spanish “cerveza” and, to a limited extent, in Italian “cervogia”, now mostly used jocularly.

Hello, good followers! It’s Tuesday, and you know the drill by now: it’s Fun Etymology time!
Today we’re doing a word we should have done a long time ago: “Viking”! Considering we have two in our staff, this is an unpardonable oversight.

The word “Viking” comes from the Old Norse “vikingr”, meaning “pirate, raider”. As you can imagine, this was not the name they gave to their people, as it was not exactly flattering, but it was the name they gave to the activity which they engaged in from time to time: namely, raiding and pillaging.

The word itself is of uncertain etymology, but it’s probably related to the word “vik”, meaning “bay” or “fjord”, from which Vikings used to launch their raiding expeditions. It’s also the second part of the name “Reykjavik”, the capital of Iceland, whose name literally means “smoking bay”.

Curiously, the Old English name “wicing” (wee-king), meaning “raider” or “viking”, appeared 300 years before the Old Norse “vikingr”, and might therefore have a wholly different etymology: it could come from Latin “vicus”, meaning “village, abitation”.
That would make the similarity between the two words completely coincidental!

Hello, protocol-compliant friends! My system clock indicates it’s Tuesday, and that means a new Fun Etymology must be outputted!

Today’s word is “robot”!

We are very familiar with this word today, both from science fiction and, increasingly, in our everyday lives. Our cars are mostly built by robots, and some of us have tiny robots cleaning their floors.
But did you know that this word did not originate in a computer lab, but in the theatre?

The word “robot” was coined by the Czech playwright Karel Capek for his 1920 play “R.U.R.” (Rossum’s Universal Robots). It is a deeivation of the Czech word “robota”, meaning “hard labour”, from Proto-Slavic “*orbu”, itself from PIE *orbh-, the same root that gave us the german word “Arbeit”, “work”.

I’m afraid the fact that the word “robot” basically means “slave” will not work in our favour during the Great Robot Uprising of 2037.

Hello, fantastic followers!

After an empty week (sorry…), we bring you your scheduled Etymological Fun this Tuesday!

Today we finally conclude our short nation series with the last of the HLC countries: my own Italy!

The origin of the word “Italy” is disputed: nobody really knows where it comes from and what it means.
The most believable etymology would have the name of the peninsula derive from the Oscan language, one of the languages spoken in Italy before the rise of Rome.
The word “Viteliu”, originally referred to the southern part of Italy and is thought to be cognate with the Latin word “vitulus” and its Italian descendant “vitello”, meaning “calf”.
So according to this hypothesis, the etymological meaning of “Italy” would be “land of calves”. Why this would be, we’re not sure.
Some connect it to the name of an indigenous tribe in modern day Calabria, called the Vitali, who perhaps were cattle herders.

Another hypothesis would have it be a loanword from Illyrian, a language spoken in the Balkans in the Roman age. However, we know little to nothing about Illyrian and we literally have no writings to figure anything out, so we can’t know for sure whether this hypothesis is true, and what the word might mean if it is.

From this Calflander it’s everything. See you around peepz!

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.