Language Learners' Library

[bugcat]

With modern global news, the names of capital cities are a part of our daily lives. But where do they come from? By studying this, we can perhaps get an insight into the history and culture of the area.

Name	Meaning
Reykjavik	“Bay of smokes”, referencing a bay at the mouth of the river Elliðaár where Ingólfr Arnarson, the founder of the city, was said to have lived together with his wife and brother.
Oslo	Apparently the name of a large nearby farm, itself named as “meadow at the foot of a hill” or “meadow consecrated to the gods”.
Stockholm	stock (log) + holme (inlet), referencing logs placed in the waters outside the city to defend against invading ships.
Copenhagen	Ultimately from Old Danish Køpmannæhafn (merchant’s harbour). Note how the Nordic etymologies have centred on the ocean, which was a major part of the culture of the area.
London	From Latin Londinium , from an unknown source, probably pre-Roman. Perhaps from a personal name derived from the reconstructed Celtic word *lond (wild).
Dublin	From Middle Irish Dublind, which meant “black pond”. Compare to English Blackpool.
Berlin	Probably from a Slavic word berl (swamp).
Amsterdam	Referencing a dam on the River Amstel.
Luxembourg	From Old High German Luclinburhuc, which meant “little castle”.
Brussels	Supposed as being from Proto-Germanic *brōkaz (marsh) + *saliz (building).
Paris	From Latin Lutetia Parisiorum (Lutetia of the Parisii), the Parisii being a Gallic tribe. Again, lutetia meant swamp. We can deduct that in ancient times, North-West Europe was a relatively marshy area.
Monaco	From the Ancient Greek word mónoikos (single house), which was the name of a local colony of Phocaean (Anatolian) Greeks. They in turn had named this colony after an epithet of Hercules (the reason why he had this title is mysterious to me, but Sanonius probably knows), who had in legend passed through the Monaco area.
Andorra la Vella	Means “Andorra the Old”, Andorra being the name of the country. Andorra itself probably takes its name from andurrial (shrub-covered land).
Madrid	From Magerit, perhaps from Latin matrix (mother [of rivers]), or possibly Arabic al-majrīṭ (water source).
Lisbon	Latin Olisipo, from Ulixbona. This may derive from Ulysses, its legendary founder; or perhaps from Phoenician alis-ubo (safe harbour).
Rome	Latin Roma, of course! Traditionally the name was said to come from Romulus, legendary founder of the city. It’s also been suggested to derive from Estruscan Ruma, a gentes (family name).
Vatican City	From Latin Uaticanus, the Vatican Hill; in turn from the verb uaticanari (to prophesy), as this was the place from which prophecies were made. Let’s enjoy the irony…
San Marino	Named after Saint Marinus, founder of a chapel and monastery in the early 4th century, which began the city.
Vaduz	Etymology obscure. First appears in the 12th century as Faduzes.
Zurich	Suggested to derive from Proto-Celtic *dubros (water).
Budapest	A merged name, like Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork, which reflects that the cities Buda and Pest were unified (along with a third city which no-one seems to remember by name). The etymologies of both names are unclear.
Warsaw	From a diminutive form of the Old Polish given name Warcislaw.
Bucharest	Means “son of Bucur” – Bucur is the legendary founder of the city.
Helsinki	Possibly named after the Swedish province of Hälsingland, which was the homeland of an early wave of immigrants. In turn, hals (neck) is thought to refer to a narrow stream.
Tallinn	Old Estonian Taani (Denmark) + linn (town). Perhaps it was named like our “Chinatowns” today, ie. a settlement with a large Danish population.
Riga	May come from Livonian ringa (loop), referring to the shape of the Daugava river; or from German Riege, a name for one of the Daugava’s tributaries. It’s also been proposed to derive from rija (threshing barn).
Vilnius	Named after the Vilnia River, and ultimately, apparently, from vilnis (wave).
Kiev	From legendary founder Kij. Business as usual.
Sofia	From the Church of St. Sophia, the oldest church in the city, again constructed in the 4th century.
Moscow	From the Moskva river, of obscure etymology.
Athens	Named for Athena, the patron goddess of the city.

In summary, the most common roots of European capital city names are:

1. Legendary founders
2. Rivers, swamps, and bays

(and yeah, I did leave some European capitals out; I got tired)

[bugcat]

I started wondering today: English is full of loanwords: from Latin, from Greek, from French, from Arabic. But what has it picked up more recently?

I think the major source of new words has been Japanese.

Of course, there are a lot of terms from the anime / manga subculture that have low dispersion into the mainstream, such as dakimakura (hug pillow), nekomimi (catgirl), tsundere and yandere personality types, the doki doki heartbeat onomatopeia, and so on. And as we know, in our own little subculture we’re all familiar with such words as sensei and goban. Some Japanese words have entered greater use, though: anime, manga, tofu, kombucha, sushi and so on. Words like sake, shochu, mirin, umeshu, mizu, misu etc. are also queueing up to enter our culinary vocabulary. And let’s not forget about emoji!

There are a ton of semi-recognised Japanese loanwords as well: words like miko, shuriken, shinkansen, fugu… Or perhaps I’m just biased by my exposure to various Japonic hobbies and interests.

For a time, Gorbachev’s political term perestroika (restructuring) was prevalent in Western dialogue, but has since vanished, and we seem to have taken nothing from Russian since then. Last century Korean gave us chaebol, a “large, family-controlled, Korean business conglomerate”; this one, it’s handed us mukbang (video of someone eating, often excessively).

Hmm, rendang (“an Indonesian dish of beef slowly cooked in coconut milk”) from Malay is becoming a bit more popular.

[Barbanaira]

@bugcat

|Vaduz|

Possibly from aquaeductus.

@bugcat

Buda

The old German name is Ofen ‘furnace, stove’.

@bugcat

Named for Athena, the patron goddess of the city.

Or vice versa, we don’t know. Same with Rome.

I can add some more:

Name	Meaning
Wien	Named after a little river by the same name, nowadays mostly underground
Bern	According to a Gaulish zinc tablet that was found in the area, the local oppidum’s name was Brenodor, possibly ‘walled town of Brennos’. The modern city was founded in 1191, but apparently the old name was still somehow remembered and etymologically connected to the animal ‘bear’, hence the coat of arms. Befor that zinc tablet was found, it was assumed that there was a connection to Verona in northern Italy, called Welsch-Bern in German sources.
Belgrad	The “White City”. Her Hungarian and old German names Nándorfehérvar, earlier Lándor-, ‘White City in Bulgaria’ and Griechisch-Weißenburg ‘White City in Greece’ reflect this.
Podgorica	‘below Gorica’, Gorica being derived from gore ‘upland’.
Istanbul	Possibly from medieval Greek στὴν πόλιν stim bolin ‘into the city’.
Edinburg	Gaelic Dùn Eideann ‘fort on the hillside’ or ‘Edwin’s fort’.
Skopje	Even the Roman colony was called Scupi. Probably a native word.
Ljubljana	Probably from the river Aluviana.
Zagreb	From zagrabiti ‘to scoop water’ or za bregom ‘behind the mountain’ or za grebom ‘behind the dyke’.
Rabat	‘fortified place’.
Algiers	‘the island’.
Tunis	‘the camp’. Or something older related to the Punic Goddes Tanit.
Tripolis in Libya	Oea, the largest of the ‘three cities’ Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna received the name of that region.
Tripolis in the Lebanon	Founded by settlers from Tyros, Sidon and Arados, hence ‘Three cities’.
Tel Aviv	‘Spring Hill’.
Ankara	From Greek ankyra ‘anchor’.
Damascus	This name is older than the alphabet.
Bagdag	Persian ‘gift of god’.
Riyad	‘The Garden’
Amman	After the Ammonites, an ancient Semitic tribe.
Cairo	‘The Glorious’ or ‘The Conqueror’, supposedly after the Arabian name of planet Mars.

[space_defender]

@bugcat

major source of new words has been Japanese.

fun thing is: many of these words are from English
animation → アニメーション → アニメ → anime
so word returned back to English in more narrow sense - only Japanese animation

also you forgot such famous word as karaoke

Tokyo 東京
東 - east
京 - capital city
so capital of Japan don’t have name, it literally means what it means

@bugcat

Moscow - From the Moskva river

we call city itself “Moskva” too, I don’t know why English use “Moscow”

and where English word “Japan” came from also a question
its Nippon / Nihon and before that Yamato

[bugcat]

I actually never thought before about the etymology of karaoke, great catch.

It seems that English Japan comes from the Malay word Jepang, in turn from a Chinese word Jat-bun or Ji̍t-pún, derived from Middle Chinese Nyit-pwón.

[bugcat]

New LangFocus

The Danish Language (IS THIS REAL?)

New NativLang as well

Clocks around the world: how other languages tell time

And even a Simon Roper

Wild Animals in the Anglo Saxon Mind

Just found this calligraphy channel

The hardest kanji to write in the world

[bugcat]

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about pluralisation. There are many languages, like Mandarin or Japanese, in which nothing pluralises; there are languages where words generally pluralise in only one way, like in English; and there are ones which have a whole range of pluralisation patterns, like Latin.

But what I’ve been wondering is: do all natural pluralising languages have some words which don’t have a distinct plural form? And why?

For instance, Latin félés (cat) doesn’t change from nominative (or vocative) singular to plural. In this case, we know that there was a coexistent spelling félis, which became félés in the plural. So we can speculate that some speakers began to use the plural form as the singular, similar to what’s happening now with English data eclipsing the original singular datum.

English fruit is a loanword from Old French, in which it also had no distinct plural form in the nominative. Its ancestor, Latin fructus pluralised to fructús, only lengthening the final vowel; this lengthening could easily have been lost in the transition to French, or in Late Latin, or perhaps was non-existent in Vulgar Latin since an unknown time. Manuscripts and inscriptions written without apices (aka. accents marking long vowels) wouldn’t have recorded the plural distinction, giving further momentum to the change.

Other words like sheep, bread, and fish are Germanic in origin, and as such we can’t explore their etymology before Old English. The word brēad had a nominative plural brēadru; fisċ had a plural fiscas. But without properly researching the subject, I can’t say whether these were used as “true plurals” or instead to refer to different types of bread and fish like today. The reason for squid and shrimp not pluralising may be due to analogy with fish; and in turn, the reason for fish not modifying as a plural could be because they were often caught in nets as groups.

Sċēap (sheep) appears never to have had a plural morph in recorded English. However, German Schaf becomes plural Schafe, and Dutch schaap becomes plural schapen. The English words for other herding animals like cows and goats kept their plurals – the reason why we cannot today say sheeps is mysterious.

We can see that English plurals often become peculiar when there is a long vowel / diphthong before a final s: moose --> moose, mouse --> mice --> goose --> geese. House becomes houses, but the sound of the s becomes that of a z. Noose is one of the few compliant exceptions to this rule of oddity. We can theorise that moose not pluralising could also have something to do with it being a loanword from an exotic language, although Algonquian nouns apparently do, in general, have plural forms. On the other hand, mice and geese seem to reflect the pluralisation pattern of Old English: mus --> mys, gōs --> gēs.

[Barbanaira]

@bugcat

We can see that English plurals often become peculiar when there is a long vowel / diphthong before a final s : moose → moose , mouse → mice → goose → geese . House becomes houses , but the sound of the s becomes that of a z . Noose is one of the few compliant exceptions to this rule of oddity. We can theorise that moose not pluralising could also have something to do with it being a loanword from an exotic language, although Algonquian nouns apparently do, in general, have plural forms. On the other hand, mice and geese seem to reflect the pluralisation pattern of Old English: mus → mys , gōs → gēs .

We treated that in a linguistics class 10 years ago. The underlying plural marker is a *-i: *mus-musi, *gans-gansi. The i causes assimilation of the preceding vowel, namely a fronting: u > y, a > e. Later, the -i drops (or doesn’t), and you end up with müs, gäns in middle high german, swiss german and probably Platt.

[Barbanaira]

I love these channels, and I find it very cool that you know them too.

[space_defender]

@bugcat

Japanese, in which nothing pluralises

as I understand by default words in Japanese don’t have singular or plural form - you have to guess it yourself.
But, there are ways to surely make it plural

‘-ra’ word ending
boku - I, me (usually used by males)
bokura - we

‘-tachi’ 達 word ending
neko - cat
nekotachi - group of cats
sometimes meaning is identical to just -s ending in English, sometimes it more like “such as”

repetition(double) the word:
我 or われ ‘ware’ - I, me
我々 or 我我 or われわれ ‘wareware’ - we, us
々 - symbol to double kanji

there are more…

[Samraku]

I think the implication when we say a language has or doesn’t have pluralization, is whether or not it has grammaticalized pluralization. Of course all natlangs have ways to express more than one of something, so that can’t be what the question is asking, since it wouldn’t be an interesting question in that case.

[Vsotvep]

Incorrect as well

The ら ending literally means “and so on”, and the たち ending is originally an honorific suffix. Both are not technically pluralisations, but rather show that you’re talking about the noun and the others. For example, 猫たち does not mean cats, but it means something like the cat, and the rest of them: it could just as well refer to a group of animals of different species.

The noun doubling has a tendency to mean a plural thing, but it does not have to. 我々 can be used singularly as well, for example.

@space_defender

but words in Japanese have as complex word endings system as Russian, I don’t see difference in word+s as in English and word+ra in Japanese, isn’t it “grammaticalized”?

Yes, but in English the s is part of the noun, while in Japanese the ら is a suffix and not part of the noun. Moreover ら can only be used in very specific cases, as can たち, since these suffixes have meaning themselves (and are not just grammatical conjugation)

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Possibly a better understanding of how Japanese pluralisation works, is to compare it to how we quantify English uncountable nouns, such as water or rice. In English, if we talk about a quantity of rice, we say something like two cups of rice or fifty grains of rice. Japanese does this with every noun: ２枚の紙 is two sheets of paper (which is natural in English as well, since paper in this sense is uncountable), ３匹の犬 is three animals of dog (which is unnatural in English, since dog is not uncountable).

[Lys]

Trust nobody!!!

[bugcat]

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.

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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).

[bugcat]

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

[Barbanaira]

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.

[bugcat]

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	井	秀 excellence	至 attain
Yamashita Keigo	山下敬吾	山	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!

[Barbanaira]

Why yes, the famous Mr. Micklescallop Cotsriver!

[Vsotvep]

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.

[Barbanaira]

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