Language Learners' Library

Trust nobody!!!

:man_facepalming:t2:

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A good window into cultural history can be to look at the etymology of personal names, particularly given ones.

In some cultures, most names have obvious meanings. For instance, the name of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (Ashur-ban-apli) meant (the god) Ashur has given (us) a son.

In others, that isn’t the case. In English only a minority of names have clear meanings, and peculiarly these are almost all feminine. Women are named, for instance, after flowers – Daisy, Violet, Petunia (dated) --, times of the year – April, May, June, Summer --, and the precious stone Ruby. Virtues were also a source of names, although these are today all old-fashioned, such as Gay (happy), Felicity (again, happiness), and Prudence. Or perhaps the happiness referred to was that of the parents on the successful birth?

Some English names have meaning only in Old English or Proto-Germanic; these names tend to be old-fashioned. Alfred meant “elf counsel” – whether counsel to elves or counselled by them; or, in fact, a counselling elf, we cannot say. Albert meant “famous and noble”. Edward, Edmund, and Eamon all meant “protector of riches”; Edgar substitutes in the word gar, “spear”.

A lot of English names are Greco-Latinate in origin, often arriving via the Bible. Biblical names include the Apostles Peter (from Greek petros, rock), Andrew (Gr. aner, man), Philip (Gr. phillipos, fond of horses); as well as ones that were Hebrew or Aramaic in origin and Hellenised.

There are also many non-Biblical Latin names still in English today: Claudius and Claude, traditionally said to be ultimately from claudus (lame); Julian and Julia, perhaps originally from Iovis (Jupiter), Adrian from the city of Hadria in Italy; Sylvia from silua (forest) and so on.

Then you have those names which have come from a Germanic language through French, for instance William (“desire for a helmet”, a poetic way of saying “brave”?). Henry has its roots in a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word *Haimariks, which seems to mean “home of a king”. Geoffrey also arises from P-G, suggested to have meant “sanctuary / peace of the Geats”, who were a Swedish people of the Middle Ages.


In Japanese and other languages with logographic scripts, the situation is different – every name has a surface meaning communicated by the kanji with which its written. However, often these kanji do not reflect the real etymology of the name, due to widespread illiteracy in ancient times.

Modern Japanese people occasionally seem to name their children in a somewhat playful way. For instance, the kanji 月 (moon) is sometimes used with the “Anglo-reading” of Luna (“Runa”), or a circle O for its Japanese reading maru.

Japanese is also interesting in that, of course, many names are written with the jinmeiyo kanji, which were excluded from much of mainstream use by the post-war orthographic reforms. There are currently 863 official jinmeiyo kanji, a list which has grown from an initial ninety in 1951. The jinmeiyo kanji contain such characters as 丞 (help), 云 (say), 亘 (range), 杏 (apricot), and 廿 (twenty).

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Most, perhaps all, languages have at least some monosyllabic words. Some languages are mostly monosyllabic.

So, how many “open” (aka, not ending in a consonant) syllables appear as words in English? And how many in other languages? To make things easier, let’s only search for ones which begin with a single consonant.

This is a pretty formal collection which leaves out a lot of slang like yeah.

Cons. a: (ā) eɪ (ē) i: (ī) əʊ (ō) u: (ū) aɪ (uy) ɔɪ (oi) ɔː (or) ɝ (er) ɛə (ear) aʊ (ow)
B bar bay be bow buy boy bore burr bear bow
C car key coo koi core cur care cow
D day doe do die door dare
F far fey fee foe four fur fair
G gar gay ghee go goo guy gore
H hay he hoe who whore her hair
J jar jay Jew joy jaw
L lay lee lo lie law lair
M mar may me mow moo my maw mare
N neigh knee know nigh nor now
P par pay pea pie paw purr pear
R ray row rue rye raw rare row
S say see sow sue sigh soy sore sir sow
T tar tee toe too tie toy tour tear
V vie vow
W way woe why war where wow
Y you your
Z tsar zoo
SH shah show shoe shy sure share
TH (ð) they though thy their thou
TH (θ) thigh thaw
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I think with Germanic and Hellenic two-part names like Philippos and Siegfried, the purpose was not necessarily to give an actually meaningful name, but to use elements that are ‘typical’ for that family. So Siegfried’s son is Sieghelm, his grandson Siegmar, Siegmar marries Gerlinde, daughter of Gerald, and to honor Gerald’s clan, Siegmar calls his son Gerfried or his daughter Sieglinde.

I actually read about an historical example of this, but I can’t remember what. Some first name that was prominent in one family became popular in a second family after one of this family married a daughter of the first family.

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What kanji are used in the names of Japanese pros? Perhaps we can revise a few.

Mental note: 史 (history) =/= 虫 (insect). 虫の史 – The History of Insects~

Romaji Kanji 1 2 3 4
Iyama Yuta 井山裕太 井 well 山 mountain 裕 rich 太 plump
Ichiriki Ryo 一力遼 一 one 力 power 遼 distant
Murakawa Daisuke 村川大介 村 village 川 river 大 big 介 shellfish
Hane Naoki 羽根直樹 羽 feather 根 root 直 value 樹 tree
Takao Shinji 高尾 紳路 高 quantity 尾 tail 紳 gentleman 路 path
Ida Atsushi 伊田篤史 伊 that one 田 rice field 厚 serious 史 history
Yuki Satoshi 結城聡 結 organise 城 castle 聡 wise
Sakai Hideyuki 坂井秀至 坂 slope 秀 excellence 至 attain
Yamashita Keigo 山下敬吾 下 below 敬 respect 我 me
Kono Rin 河野臨 河 river 野 plain 臨 look to

Murakawa has a pretty easy name to write, huh? 村川大介 only has a total of seventeen strokes – in comparison, there are eighteen strokes in 臨 alone!

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Why yes, the famous Mr. Micklescallop Cotsriver!

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Well, if you dive into the etymology of Western names, you end up with this stuff as well.

George Washington means “Farmer Wheatsheaf-town”, and Abraham Lincoln means “Father-of-many Lake-colony”, for example.

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yeah, but the Japanese familynames like Tanakawa are quite transparent. They’re also fairly recent, I think.

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They are, but it doesn’t make Western names less fun :stuck_out_tongue:

I wouldn’t be sure what this would mean, though…

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I’m probably mixing up Tanaka (field-centre) and something with -kawa.

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I always find it interesting from what fields a culture takes its personal names. Indoeuropean has those we know from the legends and the myths: Gunther ‘Battle-Army’, Siegfried ‘Victory-Peace’, Kleonymos ‘Fame-Name’, Khshayarshah ‘Strong-King’. So the Indoeuropeans where somewhat inclined to warfare, and as other names will show, fond of horses and all things powerful. Chinese and Japanese (and probably also Korean and Vietnamese) names reflect a sedentary culture that values scholarship, wisdom and beauty, as far as I can tell.

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Hmm, in any culture a good portion of the names simply refer to where your ancestors lived and what they did for a living, no? That seems pretty universal. Or is that a European bias?

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You can’t invent things completely outside of your experience, so that seems to be the universal part. But you’re talking of names like Miller, Potter or Washington? “Where your ancestors lived” presupposes a sedentary lifestyle and “what they did for a living” a division of labour.

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Exercise! Translate all the colour names in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors_(compact), or else as many as you want to.

English Latin
absolute zero zerum absolutum
acid green uiride acidum
aero caelum
African violet uiola Africae
air superiority blue uenetum excellentiae caeli
alabaster alabaster
Alice blue uenetum Aliciae
alloy orange rufum aeneum
almond amygdala
amaranth amarantus
Amazon Amazonia
amber sucinum
amethyst amethystus
android green uiride automati
apple green uride pomi
apricot armeniacum
Arctic lime citrum Thules
army green uride militare
artichoke cinara
ash grey incanum fraxinum
asparagus asparagus
atomic tangerine mandarinum atomicum
avocado persea
baby blue uenetum infantis
banana mania mania bananarum
barn red purpureum horrei
battleship grey incanum nauis
beaver castor
black atrum / nigrum
black coral corallium atrum
black olive oliua atra

eh, that’s enough of that

Let’s translate the names of some scientific (dinosaur) genera that have been discovered or added to this year.

Genus Components
Adratiklit adrar, mountain (Berber) tiklit, lizard (Berber)
Anhuilong Anhui, Chinese province long, dragon (Chinese)
Aratasaurus ara, born (Tupi) ata, fire (Tupi) saurus, lizard (Greek)
Changmiania changmian, eternal sleep (Chinese)
Dineobellator Dine, Navajo endonym bellator, warrior (Latin)
Kholumolumo dinosaur / dragon (Sesotho)
Lusovenator Lusitania aka. Portugal (Latin) uenator, hunter (Latin)
Oksoko Altaic mythological triple-headed eagle
Thanatotheristes thanatos, death (Greek) theristes, reaper (Greek)
Trierarchuncus trierarch, captain (of a trireme) (Greek) uncus, hook (Latin)

As you can see, non-Grecolatinate words are often used in modern naming to honour the local people or indigenous heritage of the area of discovery. Especially, the Chinese are pretty stubborn in retaining Sinic components.

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I didn’t know this was a thing. That is SO cool and totally a great doom metal band name :wink:

And that was the “compact” list ? O_O
I only know 10+ colours at most.

Ok, since we are in such a topic, were you aware of this speech in “English” by Xenophon Zolotas?

https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/greece/2015/10/15/speak-english-using-greek-words/

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I think it was linked earlier in the thread~ It’s an interesting speech.

Of course, the grammatical words like is and for are Germanic. Some of the words he uses are, obviously, proper names: Scylla, Charybdis, Zeus. Many of his words may be obscure to a person with a basic level of education: anathema, numismatic, plethora, oligopoly and monopsony, orthological etc.; I certainly had to look up a couple of these.

Other times you can see him stretching the language. He replaces inflation, of Latin origin, with “numismatic proliferation” and coins the word cryptoplethorist for a person who secretly supports inflationary policies, and for the contrasting plethorophobic (anti-inflationary) measures.

Sometimes he uses an attested word outside its normal sphere: eg. didymous (had to look this guy up ^__^), “twinned”, is only used in English as a biological term.


In English, on a broad scale, there is a “higher” and “lower” register of vocabulary. The lower, or conversational, register is mainly made of Germanic terms descended from Old English. The higher (academic) register is, to a greater extent, taken from French, Latin and, yes, Greek.

Let’s compare the two:

Lower Higher
dog (OE dogga) canine (L canis)
cat (OE catt) feline (L felis)
mouse (OE mus) rodent (L rodens)
cow (OE cu) bovine, beef (L bos)
sheep (OE sceap) mutton (L molto)
chickens (OE cicen) poultry (L pullus)
bird (OE bird) avian (L auis), ornithology (G ornis + logos)
bug (OE budda) insect (L insectum)
spider (OE spiþra) arachnid (G arakhne)
frog (OE frogga), newt (OE efete) amphibian (G amphibion)
tree (OE treo) arboreal (L arbor)
snake (OE snaca) serpent (L serpens)
tooth (OE toþ) dental (L dens)
book (OE boc), word (OE word) textual (L textus)

There some cases in which the Francophone challenger has overthrown the Saxon incumbent in the lower register: toadstool has been largely replaced by mushroom (OF moisseron), and Germanic acquerne has disappeared in the face of Romantic squirrel (L sciurus). However, at times the old roots have fought back, for instance when the intruder roy (L rex) was driven back out by English king, retreating into a lowly role as one part of the compound viceroy.

There’s a conlang called Anglish, which I’m sure has been mentioned in this thread, which removes all non-Germanic words from English. It recently got featured on the ILoveLanguages! channel:

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There’s a nice observation in Ivanhoe that Saxon names are used for farm animals and French ones for the meat (chapter 1):
“Nay, I can tell you more,” said Wamba, in the same tone; there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in he like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.”

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Which English words don’t have any rhymes?

AFAIK these words don’t rhyme, at least in some accents:

Word Rhyme-ending (IPA)
bathe(s, d) -eɪð(z, d)
cyborg(s) -ɔːɡ(z)
iceberg(s) -ɜːɡ(z)
warg -ɑːɡ
wolf, wolves -ʊlf, ʊlvz
wraith(s) -eɪθ(s)
wreaths -iːθs
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