Talk:Placename etymology

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Although the contents of this page are more or less duplicated on Toponymy, I didn't add this on Wikipedia:Duplicate articles because toponymy is different from etymology. The contents need to be sorted out though. Jay 11:23, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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"The etymology of Asia can only be guessed at. The strongest possibility is that is that it derives from a borrowed Semitic root 'Asu', which means varyingly 'rising' or 'light', of course a directional referring to the sunrise, Asia thus meaning 'Eastern Land'."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there not an Oceanid in Greek mythology with the name 'Asia'? Just wondering. -anonymous

[edit] Suffixes

At the miscellaneous reference desk the idea came up to make a list of common suffixes in placenames. This aritcle might be a good place to put them. Here's a list of suffixes that have already been suggested there. A grouping into countries, regions and towns might not always be clear.

• For countries: -stan, -ia, -nesia
• Regions: -shire, -nam, -franken
• Towns: -stad/stadt, -stede, -stock, -dam, -burg, -grad, -gorod, -polis, -tricht/trecht, -ton, -mouth, -mond, -zhou, -an, -pest
• Other (?): -holm, -dal, -sund, -ford

The folowing have already been sorted out by 24.20.130.253:

• Based on native words indicating a settlement or territory. -abad: Islamabad. -grad: Novi Grad. -grade: Belgrade. -grod: Grodzisk. -gorod: Novgorod. -pol: Stavropol. -krai-: Kraina. -kray: Krasnodar Kray.
• Based on native adjectives. -ski(y(e)): Chernyayevskiy. -skaya: Kargalinskaya. -skoy(e): Nagutskoye. -naya: Gornaya.
• Based on native words for hills. -gor: Krasnogor. -gorsk: Magnitogorsk. Gór-: Górna.
• Based on common last-name suffixes. -ov: Saratov. -ów: Leśników.
• Other commonly used place name suffixes. -o: Stalino. -an: Yerevan. -ka, e.g. Głowacka. -sk: Chelyabinsk, Minsk.

I wonder what should be done where a suffix has been anglicised, such as -grade, which is probably originally -grado. These might be grouped together, along with (in this case) -grad, assuming that means the same but in a different language, but then also -grod/gorod and -kray/krai? And -pol? (A problem is I know too little about this.)

If the words have the same meaning and come from the same roots, then they should be grouped together. Russian and Belarusian use "gorod" (город) for "city", and less frequently "grad" (град), while Serbian/Croatian only uses "grad". The "krai/kray" means edge or territory in Russian (край) and Ukrainian (краї), and although these have the same pronunciation, they're spelled differently in their native scripts. Words for "mountain" are also commonly used in placenames and are similar in Russian (гора -> gora), Ukrainian (гора, ґора -> hora), Czech (hora), Belarusian (гара -> gara), and Polish (góra). The mix of native terms and different transliteration rules have produced inconsistent anglicized spelling. For example, Belgrade (Beograd) has an "e" at the end of it's anglicized name, but not nearby Novi Grad (Novigrad), even though both end with "grad" in their native script. --24.20.130.253 19:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

There are also German places named simply 'Bad' (or 'Bad Hersfeld' and the like). In this case it's obvious that that has nothing to do with the suffix -bad, but in general it might be a good idea to point this out. And then there's a place called Bãd in Iran. And a place named 'Bad Axe' in the USA. I wonder what that stands for. German origin? (Tough trees? :) )

Shimgray warns that "anything involving etymology tends to breed slightly flaky original research". And indeed I'm inclined to see a connection between Woodstock and Rostock in Germany, which is likely but, again, I don't really know.

And what about prefixes? Of course there are New/Nova/Nouveau/Novi/Novoya and the like, but those may be a bit too obvious and separate words rather than prefixes (a few places start with neo-, but I don't know if that's a prefix). A similar case can be made for St/Saint/San/Santa/Santo/São. And poly-, micro- and mela- as prefixes seem to only be used in conjunction with -nesia.

Prefixes are easily found because they're alphabetically grouped together in an Atlas index. A quick glance gave me Black-, Cook-, Dong-, Free-, Glad-, Lin-, Mar-, Nor-, North- and a whole bunch of which I haven't a clue if they're prefixes. Also, what would become a suffix in English may gramatically become a prefix in other languages. But this strategy might also work to some extent with suffixes if someone could write a program that reverses names in a list and alphabetises them (shouldn't be too difficult). DirkvdM 09:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] rename?

I think this article should be renamed. The current title Placename etymology seems to suggest that the article would explain place-name etymology as a scholarly discipline, and not merely contain a random list of etymologies for continent names and the like (which are moreover not prototypical place-names). Any suggestions? --AAikio 10:48, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the name is inaccurate. Frankly, I think we might want to just limit it to the seven continents, and rename the article "List of continent name etymologies". --Miskwito 01:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)