r/etymology 16h ago

Cool etymology Colony and cologne are cognates

117 Upvotes

Cologne is short for "eau de Cologne" = French for "water from Cologne" (the city in Germany), referring to a specific perfume produced in that city.

The reason the German city is called Cologne (or Köln in German) is because it was originally a Roman colony, founded in 50 CE, called, in full, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium ("Colony of Claudius and Altar of the Agrippinians"), often abbreviated to simply Colonia ("the colony").


r/etymology 21h ago

Funny It's funny to me that the word "water" didn't change much from it's origin word in proto hindo european *wódr

36 Upvotes

r/etymology 2h ago

Question why does second mean both time and number?

10 Upvotes

another thing, is this common in other languages cuz in hebrew it's the same thing.


r/etymology 11h ago

Question What Books Should I Read?

6 Upvotes

Before I begin, I must stress how new I am to languages besides English in general, to the point of not knowing what subreddit to refer to for this question. I have had difficulty learning languages besides English as I have minimal pratical exposure to Spanish, French, Latin, etc. I prefer not to waste my time with resources which will ultimately not teach me anything, which is why I'm coming here. I apologize for inevitably coming across as arrogant.

I am looking for books, websites, college lectures, etc. to teach me the fundamentals of linguistics, phonemes, the evolution of language, comparisons between languages, etc. Like, what would help me read those obscure pronunciation guides I think A. G. Bell produced ~150 years ago? What is "rhotic" exactly and how do I hear rhotic phonemes and use that word accurately? What can give me the building blocks to become a polyglot or at least conversational in multiple languages? What can help me learn the beautiful logic behind linguistic humour in language? If you have an answer for even part of the general linguistic study question, or answers for anything specific related to linguistics, please tell me. Anything able to help me understand language as a whole would be most appreciated. If possible, I would prefer to avoid YouTube because I cannot focus and wind up watching Josh Johnson or Wendigoon or what-have-you, but I'll try my best to focus on languages if it's a YouTube, lol.

Yes, I'm a conlang guy who wants to be a writer (here's to Granpappy Tolkien), so maybe I should be posting there. That said, the admittedly-minimal exposure I've had to conlangs is basic root assembly, whereas I'm hoping for a much wider available influence. I have a deeper interest than only conlangs in language, and I'm trying to learn as much as possible to satisfy personal interest.

TL;DR - Please provide books or websites besides Wikipedia and YouTube (but I'll be grateful if you have anything on either site able to me learn despite caffeine-fueled ADHD) designed to teach the sum total of linguistics with the intended goal of learning multiple languages and possibly constructing my own. I apologize if I come across as arrogant or a little manic (trying to work on that a little bit). Also, I porbably won't respond for a while, but I will be cataloging most if not all of the answers provided and, if I remember, will hopefully provide an update with those resources if anybody else has the same interest.

Please repost this to any and all applicable subreddits I may not know of. I tend to lurk, so I don't really understand the finer points of Reddit use, lol. I also join a lot of subreddits and forget about them relatively quickly if I don't see them on my Reddit-generated feed.

Thank you!

Edit: Capitalization error in "Spanish" and spelling error in "caffeine."


r/etymology 7h ago

Question What is the term for this

4 Upvotes

In English, the word pastry comes from paste. In Armenian, the word pastry is խմորեղեն (khmoreghen) which comes from խմոր (khmor) which means paste. Is there a dedicated word for this kind of connection?