2371: mortimer Jun 15, 2021

The surname and later first name 'Mortimer' (hence 'Morty') is originally French for 'dead sea'. This habitational surname however is subject to a folk etymology that this comes from the time when a French speaking class ruled over the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291) as one of the crusader states. The Dead Sea at the end of the Jordan River is certainly more famous, but not the dead sea in question, which is actually Mortemer, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, in France. This was the site of the Battle of Mortemer in 1054 fought in this area known for its stagnant water.

2366: Names with 'St.' not Named for Saints. Jun 10, 2021

There are places around the UK place names with 'St.' included in it which are not named after any saints. For instance, in Cornwall 'St Dennis' is not actually named after the martyr Denis of Paris but as a misinterpretation of the Cornish 'dinas' (hill-fort). The 'St.' was added later. Likewise, the Cornish village of St Agnes was not named for Agnes of Rome but in this case this is not from Cornish but from Old Norse, namely as a compound from 'hagi' (pasture) and 'nes' (headland). This is particularly notable because Cornwall is about as far from the Danelaw as one can get in England, but there are certain names influenced from Old Norse.

2352: Virginia Named after Elizabeth May 27, 2021

The US state of Virginia (technically a commonwealth) is name for the British monarchy of its time, as with the colonial settlement of Jamestown within. The commonwealth however is named after Queen Elizabeth and isn’t ‘Elizabethia’. Rather this is because she was known as the Virgin Queen. Some have also suggested that this comes from native names like 'Wingandacoa' or the name 'Wingina' but the problem with this is that the name of the commonwealth originally applied to basically all of British America including as far north as Maine, as far south as parts of the Caribbean those these eventually came to have their own designations. Indeed, other queens have had monikers like Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: wife to George VI, though this is confusingly also used to refer to Queen Elizabeth II, her daughter.

2346: barcelona May 21, 2021

The name of the city 'Barcelona' originally was 'Baŕkeno', as has been attested on ancient coins and found in Ancient Greek and Latin. Where this name comes from however is slightly more contentious. One theory holds that this name comes from the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca who lived in Iberia when parts of it were under Carthaginian rule. That said, it's not clear that that area was itself a settlement of the Carthaginians. It is also not clear if its ancient name of Baŕkeno was really related to him, since there are also a number of other cities around the Mediterranean with similar names, like Barca in Libya related to 'Benghazi'.

2343: carthage May 18, 2021

Carthage, the capital or the Carthaginian Empire and now the city of Tunis, is known in Arabic as قرطاج (Qarṭāj). The Carthaginians were a Phoenician people who spoke a Semitic language, so it might sound obvious that Arabic would use this, but actually it is a loan word from French replacing an earlier 'Cartagena' which was from Latin. That said, the ancient city was known as qrt-ḥdšt ('new city') in reference to the older 'Tyre'.

2219: Finnish Borrowing from Itself—Jan 11, 2021

Finnish is known for taking on lots of loan words, but it has even loaned some of its own, sort of. On the water by Finland’s capital lies Iso Huopalahti (felt bay), which was earlier Haapalaksi, with ‘-laksi’ being an older form of ‘lahti’ and ‘haapa’ means ‘aspen’. Note that both ‘huopa’ (felt) and ‘haapa’ (aspen) both borrow from Germanic roots for those words. While changing a name from Huopalahti to Haapalaksi might not seem so crazy, the reason for this comes from the Swedish name ‘Hoplax’—the area is bilingual—which comes from ‘Haapalaksi’. This means that Huopalahti [Finnish] comes from Hoplax [Swedish, a Germanic language], from Haapalaksi [Finnish] ultimately from another Germanic word, though this last point is not strictly related. This does happen in other languages too, such as the French ‘biftèque’, a direct loan of the English ‘beefsteak’, with ‘beef’ once replacing the (Old) English ‘cū‘ (cow).

2176: liverpool, liverpudlian, & scouse Nov 29, 2020

Someone from Liverpool is a Liverpudlian, and the variety of English he uses is Scouse. The fact that there are such a variety of terms where normally they would all be related is due to things that were once informal becoming official. 'Liverpudlian' began as a 19th century pun from 'puddle' referring to a small pool; 'Liverpool' itself comes from the Old English for 'muddy water'. The name for the dialect as 'Scouse' is from a word 'lobscouse', a stewed meat dish common among the sailing community there that was then applied to the people there, though this only happened in the mid-20th century.

2115: Wallonia and the Celts Sep 29, 2020

Wallachia is a historical territory in Romania, a Romance language speaking area, named by the Germans after the Celts. This region, in which resides the modern capital Bucharest, is among other places including Wallonia in Belgium, Wales in the U.K., and the German 'Welschtirol' (Latin Tyrol) which have Germanic exonyms for once (or in the case of Wales, currently) Celtic populations. Most of Europe, from Britain and Spain over to Turkey was dominantly Celtic before the Romans who in extreme cases displaced or genocided them, or otherwise assimilated them to Roman culture; indeed that is why they are now Romanian.

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951: big apple Jul 17, 2017

The nickname 'big apple' as a reference for New York City for a long time had no clear origin, but did have a great amount of folk-etymology surrounding it. More recently, etymologists agree on having found an answer. The first recorded use of the phrase was in 1909 from Edward Martin "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city… It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap…". Here, and in other instances following this, the association of the city to big apples is thought to be from the idea that things were especially big, both in terms of grandeur but also that there was a lot of money in the area. Though the moniker faded out of use in the 1960's, it was brought back in a tourism-campaign in the 1970's, not to showcase wealth, but to give the impression of cleanliness and brightness to counter the popular image that the city was dirty.