Bizzare etymologies of common words in various languages

[el grapadura]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but as we have already seen Germany gets a lot of hate from the other countries in Europe.

Now I'm no expert on the Russian language, but after some years in school, I did pick up some interesting tidbits.

I was taught that the word for Germany was roughly translated as "Land of Fools," or something like that.

Dome derivative of дурак (Doorak) like however whenever I search for it on a translator all I get is германии (Germanii)or something similar.

Did Russian change in 2 years or am I missing something, I know it wasn't that polite but really?

I don't speak Russian, but across Slavic languages the name for Germans (and in many cases Germany itself) comes from the word for mute - in Croatia, for example, Germans are Njemci, and the country is Njemacka, both coming from nijem = mute in Croatian. And like I said, this is the case across Slavic languages (at least for the people, not sure about the country).

It has nothing to do with the hatred for Germans, it's probably just reflective of the fact that early Slavs couldn't understand German-speaking peoples, and consequently referred to them as mutes.

 

[Easterling]

That makes sense, more so than Will Helmet...Helmet of the Will...Will of the Helmet?

My own name is Guilherme hence the curiosity

Indeed it makes more sense.
But as we saw from Theodoric's exemples, names don't really need to make sense.

 

[LSCatilina]

Indeed it makes more sense.
But as we saw from Theodoric's exemples, names don't really need to make sense.

Teuth : people
Ric : leader

Leader of the people. It's making sense, i would think.

 

[Easterling]

It's also the origin of the Dutch word 'Bargoens', which is the name of the Dutch thieves cant.

Names can have the weirdest etymologies. Germanic names, like Slavic ones, usually have two name elements; with quite some exceptions, like Otto, Hugo, Emma, etc. And each of those name elements has a certain meaning. However quite early on, those name elements were stuck together just because they sounded nice, not because they meant anything in conjunction.

While some are just weird, others like 'Dietlinde' (people + soft) and 'Sieglinde' (victory + soft) are outright bizarre.

re-quoted to clear things up

 

[The Professor]

It's also the origin of the Dutch word 'Bargoens', which is the name of the Dutch thieves cant.

Names can have the weirdest etymologies. Germanic names, like Slavic ones, usually have two name elements; with quite some exceptions, like Otto, Hugo, Emma, etc. And each of those name elements has a certain meaning. However quite early on, those name elements were stuck together just because they sounded nice, not because they meant anything in conjunction.

While some are just weird, others like 'Dietlinde' (people + soft) and 'Sieglinde' (victory + soft) are outright bizarre.

re-quoted to clear things up

And add in the tendency for families to give names similar to their relatives...

 

[LSCatilina]

Names can have the weirdest etymologies. Germanic names, like Slavic ones, usually have two name elements; with quite some exceptions, like Otto, Hugo, Emma, etc. And each of those name elements has a certain meaning. However quite early on, those name elements were stuck together just because they sounded nice, not because they meant anything in conjunction.

While some are just weird, others like 'Dietlinde' (people + soft) and 'Sieglinde' (victory + soft) are outright bizarre.

Well, it wasn't really for the esthetic part, I would say.

It was a common practice (at least until the IX century) to forge names in order to represent the two lines, patrilinear and matrilinear.

By exemple, Theutric and Hlothilda could have an child named : Hlothric. Of course, it can become weird when it makes references to the father of the mother, etc.
It's interesting too, when it mix romance and germanic parts.

As said, you had too the practice of reusing famous names of one of the lines.

After the IX it changes a bit : by exemple Charlemagne would give to his sons names non issued from his ancestry, but from prestigious names : by exemples Hlotvik (Lewis) ou Hlotar (Lothar/Clotaire) in reference of the merovingian kings.

Another tendency of the IX is to use bilbical names, critically for women. For men, you have a quick popularity of Wilhalm, thanks to Guilhèm of Gellone. Thanks to his patronage, the christiened name would be used by people not at all related to him, as William the Conqueror.

 

[Thande]

I always thought it was funny how in the late eleventh and early twelfth century there was such a craze for the name Matilda that it becomes almost impossible to understand the period of the Anarchy in England, just because all the female players in it seem to be called Matilda.

 

[LSCatilina]

I always thought it was funny how in the late eleventh and early twelfth century there was such a craze for the name Matilda that it becomes almost impossible to understand the period of the Anarchy in England, just because all the female players in it seem to be called Matilda.

You think it's hard? Just take a look in the conflicts between nobles in Gothia and Spain between 850 and 900. EVERYBODY is called Guilhèm. I mean, fathers, sons, foes...
Only the nicknames are helping for that. And by helping I mean, "Guilhèm-the-great-mouth" or sort of.

 

[Tocomocho]

Not true. The initial results Gould talked about suggested that "there was no such thing as a zebra", but those results have been proven wrong. Even the initial results did NOT suggest what you say.
They placed Burchell's and Grevy's as a sister group, with the Mountain as sister to the true horses. Those two clades, in turn, were sister groups forming a horse/zebra clade, with all the asses outside it.


Note that Gould's essay is so old that he states that Gorillas and chimps are a sister group, when modern genetics has clearly shown Humans and chimps are sister groups and that gorillas are the sister group to the human/chimp clade.

Thanks for the correction, it has been ages since I read Gould's essay and I must have mixed it with something else. I was in a hurry so I just googled an online version to link and didn't check it. I must say this makes the issue a lot less funny though...

In Catalan too the word 'gresca' (noisy party) cames from latin 'graecisca' referencing the fame of greek bacanals in byzantine times

And then passed into Spanish meaning "brawl". Way to suck out the funnies.

 

[Petike]

Well, I must say this thread has taken off really nicely.

 

[Mefisto]

Another curiosity.
In Polish a priest is called "ksiądz". "Ksiądz" in old times used to mean "duke" or "prince". This word changed meaning because when our first king Bolesław the Brave introduced christian priests (of foreign origin because there were no local christian cadre at that time) he ordered the people to regard them as dukes. And this become tradition and the word "ksiądz" for christian priest eventually completely supplanted the word "pop" (which was used also in other slavic languages).
The funny thing is that Poles nowadays call a prince or duke "książę",which is diminutive of "ksiądz". "Książę" used to mean in the beginning "young ruler" then "the magnate, the mighty one" and later "the aristocrat one step below king". So now in Polish mere parish priest has more mature title than son of king.

 

[Petike]

Another curiosity.

Kňaz (priest) from knieža/kňažná (prince/princess) in our case as well.

And even the Hungarian language got into the act in the more distant past, though it had a different connotation than towards priests : Kenéz was a profession rather similar to (or pretty much synonymic with) the šoltýs/soltés/Schultheiss type of governor (or "colonial mayor") typical for central Europe in the high and late Middles Ages. Basically, these guys were overseers of the founding of new villages in unsettled parts of the country (medieval Hungary had a lot of those even in the 14th-16th century) and often acted as their provisional mayors and administrative-officials-for-everything.

Ironically, this was reversed in Iceland, where the local nobles (well, the chieftain nobility and assorted higher-ups) were called goðar, deriving from the Germanic and Scandinavian tradition of chieftains also being priests, middlemen between the people and the gods (since most Germanic cultures throughout history had no true priest social group).

 

[Alex Richards]

I always thought it was funny how in the late eleventh and early twelfth century there was such a craze for the name Matilda that it becomes almost impossible to understand the period of the Anarchy in England, just because all the female players in it seem to be called Matilda.

You think it's hard? Just take a look in the conflicts between nobles in Gothia and Spain between 850 and 900. EVERYBODY is called Guilhèm. I mean, fathers, sons, foes...
Only the nicknames are helping for that. And by helping I mean, "Guilhèm-the-great-mouth" or sort of.

Or 17th Century France which saw Louis XIV, father Louis XIII, two sons also called Louis (Louis le grand dauphin and Louis-Francois), the oldest (and only one to survive to adulthood) calling his son Louis (le Petit dauphin), as did the second, while that Louis had two sons named Louis (duke of Brittany and Louis XV) and then Louis XV named his first son Louis who had two sons named Louis and 3 out of 4 grandsons were named Louis...

If you add in all the Philippes as well, basically every male Bourbon in France during the 17th/18th Centuries was either Louis or Phillipe (except for a few named Charles)

 

[Easterling]

Kňaz (priest) from knieža/kňažná (prince/princess) in our case as well.

And even the Hungarian language got into the act in the more distant past, though it had a different connotation than towards priests : Kenéz was a profession rather similar to (or pretty much synonymic with) the šoltýs/soltés/Schultheiss type of governor (or "colonial mayor") typical for central Europe in the high and late Middles Ages. Basically, these guys were overseers of the founding of new villages in unsettled parts of the country (medieval Hungary had a lot of those even in the 14th-16th century) and often acted as their provisional mayors and administrative-officials-for-everything.

The Hungarians took the word Kenez from the Romanians, where it was used with the same meaning of small village notable, in contrast to its original use in slavic languages, as a title for the supreme ruler.
An opposite thing happened to the word Voivode. In slavic languages, a voivode (roughly translated as "warlord") was simply a military commander, whereas in the Romanian principalities, Voievod was the title of the supreme ruler.
Back to Knez: a funny thing happened with this word in Romanian language, because at some time, particularly in the region of Banat (presently south-western Romania) the word was distorted into chinez. The funny thing is that in modern times chinez in romanian means "chinese". Which is funny when it appears in toponimics such as Satchinez (which obviously meant "kneze's village" but to a modern person would appear to mean "chinese village") Where does a "chinese" village come from in Romania!?
Off-topic note: One of the most famous knezes from Banat was Pavel Chinezul (Kennezy Pal in Hungarian). He earned his fame in the wars against the Ottomans in the 15th century. He was known for his exceptional physical strength and his trade-mark fighting style involved dual-wielding longswords (which, unlike what you may see in games and movies, is extremely difficult for a normal human to do).

 

[Zajir]

The Hungarians took the word Kenez from the Romanians, where it was used with the same meaning of small village notable, in contrast to its original use in slavic languages, as a title for the supreme ruler.
An opposite thing happened to the word Voivode. In slavic languages, a voivode (roughly translated as "warlord") was simply a military commander, whereas in the Romanian principalities, Voievod was the title of the supreme ruler.
Back to Knez: a funny thing happened with this word in Romanian language, because at some time, particularly in the region of Banat (presently south-western Romania) the word was distorted into chinez. The funny thing is that in modern times chinez in romanian means "chinese". Which is funny when it appears in toponimics such as Satchinez (which obviously meant "kneze's village" but to a modern person would appear to mean "chinese village") Where does a "chinese" village come from in Romania!?
Off-topic note: One of the most famous knezes from Banat was Pavel Chinezul (Kennezy Pal in Hungarian). He earned his fame in the wars against the Ottomans in the 15th century. He was known for his exceptional physical strength and his trade-mark fighting style involved dual-wielding longswords (which, unlike what you may see in games and movies, is extremely difficult for a normal human to do).

Also the old football team Chinezul Timisoara

 

[LSCatilina]

About the origin of modern french expressions...

"La Maison qui Rend Fou" (The Place That Sends You Mad). Coming from a scene from "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix", where the Gaul search the "Permit A-38" as a task, and being a name for insane bureaucracy.

 

[joho6411]

In doing research for my TL, I found out that the English word "slut" is "salope" in French. But "salope" is where we in English get the word "slob". Joho.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

And, of course, we have English "silly" and German "selig" (holy, blessed) being cognate.

And "hen" the female chicken gets its name from an ancient root 'to sing' (cognate to French chanter). Originally 'hen' was applied to roosters, which at least makes sense. I think it still works that way in Scandinavian languages.

 

[Ciclavex]

I've always found it funny that, uniquely among modern Germanic languages, English uses the Indo-European root *gno- as the beginning point of our most common word for the concept "to know", which as the same meaning, while other Germanic languages prefer to use words derived from *weyd- (such as the German wissen) to mean the same concept, while that root generally means "to see" (Germanic languages do have variants of words descended from *gno- to mean specialized versions of the concept).

What's funny is, that it means that "know" and "gignosko" (γιγνώσκω) in Ancient Greek have the same root and meaning, having evolved totally separately, despite the languages being barely related. You could translate the term "Gnostic" into English as "Knower" as a direct calque and the words would look like one directly influenced the other, when they didn't.

 

[Marc Pasquin]

Another curiosity.
In Polish a priest is called "ksiądz". "Ksiądz" in old times used to mean "duke" or "prince". This word changed meaning because when our first king Bolesław the Brave introduced christian priests (of foreign origin because there were no local christian cadre at that time) he ordered the people to regard them as dukes. And this become tradition and the word "ksiądz" for christian priest eventually completely supplanted the word "pop" (which was used also in other slavic languages).
The funny thing is that Poles nowadays call a prince or duke "książę",which is diminutive of "ksiądz". "Książę" used to mean in the beginning "young ruler" then "the magnate, the mighty one" and later "the aristocrat one step below king". So now in Polish mere parish priest has more mature title than son of king.

does this term only apply to catholic priest or to all priests ?