1992: The Sun in Peruvian Currency May 29, 2020

In 1991, Peru renamed its currency 'nuevo sol' (new Sun) because its hyperinflation rates were sky-high. Well not really, and actually, the Sun has always played a role in the currency names since 1863, though granted those have just been Peruvian Sol, Inti from 1985 (represented I/), and new Sol in 1991 (represented S/), both changed due to hyperinflation. The name Inti comes from the name of the Incan Sun god. Indeed, this is not the only unit named for the Sun, as there was also the medieval French coin 'sou'.

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1991: ℞ or Rx? May 28, 2020

The symbols for drugs is ℞ but this is often written as Rx. Either way, none of the words 'drug', 'pharmacy' or 'perscription' start with R nor especially end in X. This is because the abbreviated word—while it exists today in English—is from the Latin 'recipe'. It should be noted, however, that 'recipe' in Latin does not refer to cooking or baking as it does in English now, but was a verb meaning 'take!' or 'recieve!' (as an imperative). The X is just because of the symbol having a slash, like many currency symbols.

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1990: The Curious Second Letters in Oz. and No. May 27, 2020

Not all abbreviations or symbols make sense, especially when some (or even all) of the shortened version has extra letters. For instance, ounce and number are abbreviated Oz. and No. respectively, but in neither case is the last letter of the abbreviation in the word it's supposed to abbreviate. This is because they aren't abbreviating English; Oz. is from the Italian 'onza', and No. is from the Latin 'Numero', though they mean the same things.

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1989: Frankokratia: Not in France May 26, 2020

The fact that the original Franks spoke a Germanic language and not French despite modern France deriving its name from this is jarring, but there perhaps even more confusing is Frankokratia, a territory carved out of the former Byzantine Empire where people spoke Greek. Now, to be clear, this was the official name, along with Venetokratia in modern-day Greece, but both of these places were territories gained in crusades, and means 'Rule of the Franks' or '...of the Venetians' respectively. This area was often referred to collectively as Latinokratia or 'rule of the Latins', around Constantinople. Some minor territories in this area were controlled by Venice into the 19th century but never by France directly, despite the name.

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1988: Pound Signs: Both £ and # May 25, 2020

Both the £ and # symbols are known as pound signs, but not for the same things; the former is for the currency and the latter is for the weight. Still, despite their apparent vision they actually come from the same abbreviation. Both come as a quicker way to write the letters lb., themselves short for the Latin 'libra' meaning 'pound [weight]' or 'scale'. The use of # as a number sign only came about from computer coding.

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1987: Typo in Australia's Legal Tender May 24, 2020

The Australian government printed its $50 bill from 2018, 46 million times with a typo in it. Part of the reason is that it took several months past the printing to catch the error since it was in microprint, as an anti-counterfeit (or if you will, simply 'feit') precaution. That is, there is an excerpt from an Edith Cowen speech which is printed in letters too small to read with the naked eye using the spelling 'responsibilty', lacking the i in '-ity'. This was not noticed until several months after the printing, and is still legal tender.

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1986: Germanic Terms of Affinity: Why Father-In-Laws are so Difficult May 23, 2020

In 2 weeks, there will be a surprise announced to commemorate the 2,000th post. Mark your calendars

In German, as in English there is a combining form to indicate relation through marriage, as in '-in-law', or in German 'schwieger-', though on its own it will imply 'mother-in-law'. So for any given relation, one can simply add this form as with 'son-in-law' or 'Schwiegersohn', but in this case exclusively 'son-in-law' can be replaced with the less common but still acceptable 'Eidam' in German. This is the same in Yiddish, but the Yiddish for 'daughter-in-law', or שנור (shnur) is a cognate with the German dialectal form 'Schnur' meaning 'sister-in-law' instead, though more often it just means 'cord'. Indeed, Yiddish does not use the formulas like Standard German or English, and has separate words for each relative, including שוויגער (shviger) for 'mother-in-law', and שווער (shver) for 'father-in-law', which is also the same word as the adjective meaning 'difficult'.

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1985: Bad Loans: Yiddish to English May 22, 2020

Just because a word is adopted from another language, doesn't mean at all that the original meaning is kept. For instance, many Yiddish word in English, like 'chutzpah', 'glitch', and 'mentsh' have different meanings, often by a degree of intensity. 'Chutzpah' in English is positive, being synonymous with 'moxie' and conveying toughness, but in Yiddish חצפה means 'insolence' or 'audacity'. Likewise, 'mentsh' (מענטש) in English refers to a great, upstanding person, but in Yiddish merely means 'person' in a very generic sense. 'Glitch' is a little different too, but partly because it often is used to refer to technological issues which would not have possibly existed when the word, glitsh (גליטש), meaning 'slip', was adopted into English.

This has been talked about with regard to Spanish in Tagalog

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1984: despots, dictators, and tyrants May 21, 2020

Changes in words' meaning through history can show how people considered powerful leaders. The original roots for 'despot', 'dictator', and 'tyrant'—δεσπότης (despótēs), dictator, and τύραννος (tyrannos)—were essentially all neutral, like 'king' would be in English. However, each of these gained negative associations, connoting unfairness and cruelty. Each of these is from a different culture or time, Byzantine, Roman, or Ancient Greek respectively, but the same process has been noted for the word 'autocrat' in some ways. It is important to consider also who specifically gave them negative connotations, as at least in the case of 'despot', this was not even a official title and was only used negatively towards the very end of the empire.

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1983: How 'Karl' Came to Mean 'King' in Slavic May 20, 2020

The name Karl (also found as Charles or Carlos etc.) is a pretty popular one, but it has been historically significant as well. One of the relatively few Germanic names not to be a compound, the name nevertheless comes from an element meaning '(free) man', and in Old English it has been contrasted with the etymological root for 'Earl': Ċeorl and eorl respectively. This meaning of 'free man' survives too in the English 'churl' (hence 'churlish'). However, its meaning is in some ways less significant than the fact that it became the standard word for 'king' in many Slavic languages and Hungarian, such as the Polish 'król', Latvian 'karalis', or Hungarian 'király. This pattern is due largely to Charlemagne and the other Carolingians, also known as 'Karol(us)'.

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1982: charlemagne May 19, 2020

Charlemagne is a name and an honorific all wrapped into one. This perhaps clearest in the German version, 'Große Karl', i.e. 'Karl [Charles] the Great'. His name was actually 'Charles le Magne', from the Latin 'magnus' (great) making the French '-gn-', also with 'champagne' or 'vigne' (20), or even the English version as with 'sign' a little less odd seeming. There will be more about this in the next post.

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1981: Hand: Give and Take in PIE May 18, 2020

The word 'prehensile', which usually refers to animal limbs that can grasp, and can tell us a lot about words in general. It comes from Latin participle 'hendō' (though never attested without a prefix) meaning 'I take', and is taken to come from the Proto-Indo-European *gʰed-, which gave English 'get'. It also gave (handed, even) Modern English 'hand' but also the Old English 'mund', which, despite sharing spelling with the German word for 'mouth', means 'hand', like the Latin 'manus' (hand). There are literally dozens more words that could go along this list for Modern English alone, including 'hedera' (another name for ivy), but what might be the most interesting point is that while, as exhibited before, 'hand' as a verb usually means 'to give', it originally, along with these other meanings, meant 'to take, which has been written about here before, and for lots of different cases.

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1980: Germans Calling Italians 'Welsh' Derogatorily May 17, 2020

Although its country is significantly smaller even than the state surrounding the German capital, German has two words for the Welsh language. The one that one could expect to hear is 'walisisch', but there is another, more archaic one 'welsch'. This one not only has derogatory undertones, but also is used to describe speakers of Romance languages, particularly Italian and French, so it's less precise. This is even used in the German name for the Italian province Trentino, 'Welschtirol' (Latin Tyrol), particularly because there is already another region Südtirol (South Tyrol), which have both historically been German-speaking areas, lost in WWI.

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1978: Devil's Water and Eden River: Not Religious May 15, 2020

Generally, when people come across the words 'Devil' or 'Eden', this is expected to have some religious context, but in the case of both Devil's Water and Eden River in both close to the Scottish-English border, they have nothing to do with religion. Both words actually come from Celtic. The Devil's Water is actually related to the name 'Douglas', which is a surname from the area. This is understood to come from the Brittonic dūβ- ('black')—same as in ‘Dublin’—and glẹ:ss (stream). In the former case, as documented by the Romans this comes from the Celtic 'ituna' meaning 'rushing [water]'. In both cases, these modern names come from topographical descriptions, and not Biblical imagery.

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1977: Shewed or Shown May 14, 2020

Generally, standard but less common forms for verbs, including 'shown' instead of 'showed', is thought of being more historical, but this is not necessarily true. 'Shewed' is documented as a form of 'showed', as in the 1471 order from Edward IV that the "bodies of the dead Lords [Warwick and Montagu be]...openly shewed" as to prove they were actually dead. Indeed, this form was used even into the 19th century commonly enough, though now shown is undoubtedly the most popularly used. It is a mistake to believe that the progression of language is universally and exclusively towards uniformity. For another example of this, see: sneaked and snuck.

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1976: 'Buffalo' East of the Mississippi May 13, 2020

Place names in America often come from totally foreign sources, like Cairo, Illinois, Manchester, New Hampshire, and St. Petersburg, Florida. Lots of other cities too took their names from local things, with those no longer existing. Bisons (or Buffalo, as they're often misnomered to be) are all but gone from the American East, but gave rise to town names in at least 8 states east of the Mississippi River. Perhaps most famously Buffalo, New York, but this list also includes another dozen or two with rivers, creeks, or mountains named "Buffalo", and more yet including names related to them, like Stamping Ground, Kentucky.

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1975: Town with an Exclamation Mark: Westward Ho! and Hamilton! May 12, 2020

The town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! may have the most exclamation points in its name [1], but it's not the only one to have any. England's Westward Ho! is the official name for the Devonshire town named in 1855 for Charles Kingsley's novel of the same name, set in a nearby town, Bideford. Other places have tried, such as Hamilton!, Ohio which was made official as a publicity stunt in the 1980's (named before the hit musical), but it is not recognized by the US Federal Government. Looking past settlement names, Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is located along the Ha! Ha! River, and many other sites in the area take their names accordingly.

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1974: The Town with 2 Exclamation Points May 11, 2020

Most places in the world don't have punctuation in their names; punctuation is for grammar after all. However, even though many places have multiple words, the Quebec town of "Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!" has a record for the most exclamation points in an official name: 2. This might sound like a joke, literally, but actually this is from the word 'ha ha' which is the term in both French and English for a ditch with the wall inside below ground-level. These are easy to fall into, and hence: ha ha. The term was originally French, and since French can't have [h] at the beginning of words, this is pronounced in French like more of an alarmed shout: ah! ah!.

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1973: Karta and Mappa: Cards and Napkins May 10, 2020

There is not a clear pattern always with Germanic, Slavic and Romance language when it comes to words for maps. French and Romanian, but also German, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian use a word along the lines of <karta>, and the English 'cartography', 'chart', and 'card' would fit in this camp. Meanwhile, English and Yiddish, Spanish and Portuguese, and also Polish use words along the lines of <map(a)>. As it happens, the forms around <karta> come ultimately from Greek where χάρτης means 'map' but also 'card'; indeed, it originally just means 'papyrus leaf'. Meanwhile, the <map(a)> forms come not just from Latin, but from the phrase 'Mappa Mundī' (world map), with 'mappa' on its own meaning 'cloth' or even 'napkin'.

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1972: Cultural Continents: English & Spanish May 9, 2020

Continents are real, but their divisions are cultural. For instance, the Spanish term for North and South America—perceived as 2 continents in English—is simply 'America', as in "the Americas". This is clarified from the English 'American' as in from the USA with the term 'estadounidense' literally 'of the United States' as 'Americano' often refers to those from any part of the Americas, though technically the rare term 'Usonian' can be used in English here as well. This means that between Spanish and English language speakers, they will likely differ on the answer to how many continents there are.

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