44
votes
Accepted
Why does English not have a cognate of words like heter, in Swedish, or llama, in Spanish, etc?
English does have that verb which is etymologically related to the Swedish heter, Icelandic heiti, German heißen, etc. In English it is to hight, only it is archaic, still sometimes it is used ...
- 16.8k
25
votes
Accepted
In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
The first thing I thought of was names derived in antiquity from the names of ancient Greek goddesses.
For example, the French male name Hercule is ultimately from the name of the Greek goddess Hera (...
- 17.2k
24
votes
Accepted
Why was the name תאומא transliterated as Θωμᾶς (Thomas) rather than Τωμᾶς (Tomas)?
It is because, at least in the later borrowings, Semitic ṭ ט is regularly represented by τ [t], while t ת is represented by θ [th]. It has to do with the fact that the Semitic emphatics are ...
- 23.1k
16
votes
Why do some languages lack family name markers?
The use of grammaticalized family-name markers as in the Slavic etc. cases is relatively infrequent, so the better question is, why or how do such constructions arise in some languages? The ordinary ...
- 74.9k
13
votes
Is the study of proper names really a branch of linguistics?
Proper names are nouns, albeit with specific characteristics, so they play the roles other nouns play in syntax (subject, object, etc). They also partake in morphology; if a language has genders, it ...
- 1,753
13
votes
Why does English not have a cognate of words like heter, in Swedish, or llama, in Spanish, etc?
From my understanding of the other answers, I think English does have this idiom. Only, instead of a "word", in English "nothing at all" is used (or if you're a programmer, the empty string).
The ...
- 291
12
votes
In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
In Italian there are a number of historically female names which are occasionally used as male names, e.g.
Celeste, Amabile, Fiore, Diamante
In many Romance languages the female name Maria (or some ...
- 3,084
12
votes
Why do some languages lack family name markers?
First of all, family names are far from being universal. In many places of the world they are pretty recent introductions. The existence of family names is also not determined by linguistic factors (...
- 28.3k
10
votes
Excepting Romanian, is "Wales" ever translated/transliterated in modern languages with the same term as that meaning "Gaul" or "Gauls"?
This may sound weird, but it's not. Well, in fact, it is very weird indeed.
–– With equal right one might say that Romania should correctly be called Wales. ––
If that joke is lost on you, read the ...
- 217
9
votes
Why does English not have a cognate of words like heter, in Swedish, or llama, in Spanish, etc?
English does have a word for it, it's called.
e.g.
Swedish: Jag heter Danny
English: I'm called Danny
Although I'm Danny, or My name's Danny sounds less 'weird' to me.
- 199
9
votes
Accepted
How do Indian short form of names work in the USA?
Long Indian names are indeed shortened for informal/semi formal usage in India too. It is typically shortened to the first two syllables. For example Venkataraghavan usually becomes Venkat and in the ...
- 236
9
votes
Julius Caesar original name spelling?
As others stated, on monumental inscriptions, the name of Julius Caesar would look similar to
IVLIVS CAESAR
However, saying it was "spelled with an I instead of a J" may be misleading, because 'J' ...
- 1,848
9
votes
Why is it that Babylonian king names do not match their Akkadian equivalent?
This comes down to the ambiguities in the Cuneiform script.
Cuneiform doesn't have a one-to-one correspondence between signs and sounds. The sign DIŊIR is a good example. The sign started out in ...
- 58.8k
9
votes
Why are the phonemes of Tutankhamun's throne name transliterated out of order?
The throne name (praenomen) has the following four hieroglyphs, listed by Gardiner number as:
𓎟 V30 (basket)
𓏥 Z2 (three strokes)
𓆣 L1 (dung beetle)
𓇳 N5 (sun)
I think the issue ...
- 6,323
6
votes
Accepted
Do Azeri people actually use Ə instead of A in names?
This is an interesting question. As always with transliteration, there are compromises.
Why do Azeris still transcribe their names if both the forms are written in Latin? I am aware that they used ...
- 7,293
6
votes
Accepted
Why do some languages have many names?
The names for a given language can be divided into exonyms and endonyms. Exonyms are the names given to the language (sometimes by extension, from the name given to the people who speak it) by ...
- 1,195
6
votes
Frequency of non-legal name preference
This is an area where meaningful scientific research is impossible. The main problem lies in the concept of "legal name". There are hundreds of countries with their own laws, which may range ...
- 74.9k
5
votes
Is the study of proper names really a branch of linguistics?
Onomastics¹ has a big overlap with linguistics, specially with historical linguistics (derivation and meaning of names, sound shifts, etc.). Some valuable historical linguistic information is only ...
- 28.3k
5
votes
In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
There are a few examples from Germanic names: Deolindo or Teolindo are derived from Deolinda/Teolinda (modern German cognate: Dietlind).
- 28.3k
5
votes
In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
Derivation and inflection are different processes. Several proper nouns in Romance languages inflect for gender; in French, such inflection may be easily mistaken for a derivation, because the ...
- 1,753
5
votes
Accepted
Does the southern pronunciation of Jenny have a triphthong in it?
Phonetically, I would say no.
Here's a plot of this final vowel (taken from about 12.75 seconds into the linked video). It's not a great plot, since the recording quality I'm using isn't great, but ...
- 58.8k
5
votes
Is Latin Proto-Romance?
"Proto-X" tends to be used for the last common ancestor of X—the point at which the X languages started to diverge and become their own entities. This is why you'll sometimes hear about "pre-Proto-...
- 58.8k
5
votes
How did Shiloah (שילוח) become Siloam and Silwan?
I don't think any of these qualify as morphological changes.
Koine Greek lacked a /ʃ/ phoneme, so Hebrew shin was regularly transcribed with sigma /s/. The final mu is, I think, a relic of mimation: ...
- 58.8k
4
votes
How did the name for st Peter become to be rendered as "Peter" in English, and why is not rendered as "stone" or "rock"
What you are saying about the "Latin languages" is not correct. In French the masculine proper name Pierre is not the same word as the feminine common noun pierre, nor are they identical ...
- 23.1k
4
votes
Accepted
Addressing others using names/titles vs pronouns
The term is named "Pronoun Avoidance" and you can see which languages avoid using pronouns for politeness in this map: https://wals.info/feature/45A#2/25.7/137.0
Also see the explanation in ...
- 516
4
votes
Accepted
Origin of the family name affix "tom"
Dutch tom is clearly cognate to High German zum which is a contraction of zu dem "to the". The German preposition zu can be used both in a static sense ("at") and in a directional ...
- 28.3k
3
votes
Is the study of proper names really a branch of linguistics?
Proper names are created in many languages, often by taking an interpretable phrase and using it (e.g. the Shona names Chipo "gift", Farai "be happy (pl)!"), the name of the Tanzanian author ...
- 74.9k
3
votes
Why are most given names so common?
First names are subject to Zipf's law of distribution (see this paper for some examples). This means that the most frequent name is roughly twice as common as the one after that and so on. The same ...
- 10.6k
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