AncientPages.com –<\/strong>\u00a0The naming process, the act of naming the items of the world, is as old as the first words spoken by our\u00a0ancestors. We can reconstruct the stages of this process through etymology, which studies the historical development of the lexicon of a language.<\/p>\n English words tell a lot of stories. To get back to their origins, linguists apply the\u00a0comparative method. Languages are not isolated entities, but belong to linguistic families \u2013 English is a west Germanic language from the Indo-European family, for example \u2013 and their vocabularies are connected.<\/p>\n Detail from Tacuinum Sanitatis, a 14th-century handbook of medieval health.<\/em><\/p>\n In the comparative method, linguists compare cognates (the same words in different-but-related languages, like\u00a0mother<\/em>\u00a0in English,\u00a0m\u0101ter<\/em>\u00a0in Latin, and\u00a0mutter<\/em>\u00a0in German) and reconstruct the ways these words were pronounced by ancient speakers.<\/p>\n By doing this, linguists give a voice to our ancestors, travelling back in time towards prehistoric ages with no written records. It\u2019s difficult and complex, but very cool stuff.<\/p>\n However, the process doesn\u2019t always work. The English lexicon includes some terms known as \u201cproper words\u201d, which today apparently exist only in English. Cognates for them cannot be found in any other language.<\/p>\n These are very simple and common words but being unique, we cannot apply the comparative method to them and therefore cannot reconstruct their origins. These \u201cproper words\u201d represent an exciting puzzle of the English language. Here are five examples.<\/p>\n \u201cBird\u201d sounds Germanic, but doesn\u2019t have cognates in any other Germanic language. It can be found in Old English as a rare variant of\u00a0bridd<\/em>, indicating a \u201cyoung bird\u201d.<\/p>\n Old English speakers used\u00a0fugel<\/em>, as in \u201cfowl\u201d, as a standard term for bird. Up to the 15th century, \u201cbird\u201d was used not only to describe a young bird, but also a young animal in general \u2013 even a fish or a child.<\/p>\n Who (or what) was, originally, a \u201cboy\u201d? No one knows. In the 13th century, a\u00a0boie<\/em>\u00a0was a servant, but already in that time the provenance of the word was obscure. A century later, the term started being used to indicate a male child. The word doesn\u2019t sound Germanic, but it\u2019s not clear whether it was imported to England by the Normans either.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know the origins of \u2018boy\u2019 or \u2018girl\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0Royal MS 10 E IV f.311v \/ The British Library<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n One interpretation\u00a0traces back the term to an unattested vulgar Latin verb,\u00a0*imboiare<\/em>\u00a0(in etymological notation, the asterisk indicates a word that has been reconstructed on the basis of the comparative method, rather than found in source material), possibly connected with the Latin\u00a0boia<\/em>, meaning yoke or collar, and with the concept of slavery.<\/p>\n Since the 14th century,\u00a0gyrle<\/em>\u00a0was a word used to indicate a child, with no gender distinction. Despite the apparent simplicity of the term, so far nobody has been able to reconstruct its origins.\u00a0Some scholars\u00a0have connected it with the Old English word\u00a0gierela<\/em>, meaning garment, with a semantic transition presumed from \u201cchild\u2019s apron (garment)\u201d to, simply, \u201cchild\u201d.<\/p>\n Others\u00a0think that \u201cgirl\u201d belongs to a set of words that also includes \u201cboy\u201d, \u201class\u201d and \u201clad\u201d, which could have derived from other terms that cannot be directly linked to them any more. Whatever the truth is, the mystery of \u201cgirl\u201d persists.<\/p>\n \u201cDog\u201d comes from Old English\u00a0docga<\/em>, a very rare word later used in Middle English to depict a specific, strong breed \u2013 the mastiff.<\/p>\n In Old English,\u00a0hund<\/em>\u00a0was the general Germanic word until the term\u00a0docga<\/em>\u00a0replaced it almost completely in the 16th century. Now, \u201chound\u201d is semantically specialised and indicates a hunting dog. So far, nobody has been able to reconstruct the etymological root of\u00a0docga<\/em>, and no ancient English word appears to be related to it.<\/p>\n \u201cDog\u201d is therefore a true lexicological mystery of the English vocabulary. Probably the breed it was originally indicating became popular enough to be identified with the notion of \u201cdog\u201d in itself, but this doesn\u2019t explain the provenance of the word.<\/p>\n The same puzzling origins are shared by other zoological terms in the English lexicon, like \u201cpig, “stag\u201d and \u201chog\u201d, which are all etymologically unclear. Interestingly, the widespread word for \u201cdog\u201d in Spanish,\u00a0perro<\/em>, is also completely obscure in its origins.<\/p>\n \u201cRecorder\u201d is something of an intruder in this list of etymological oddities, because we know its origins. It comes from the Middle French verb \u201crecorder\u201d, which meant to relate, repeat or recall, which in turn comes from the Latin\u00a0record\u0101r\u012b<\/em>.<\/p>\n However, the recorder I am referring to is not the device used to record but the \u201cstraight flute\u201d, a musical instrument. Despite its very recognisable origins, no one knows why in English, the \u201cstraight flute\u201d \u2013\u00a0flauto dolce<\/em>, in Italian,\u00a0fl\u00fbte \u00e0 bec<\/em>\u00a0in French, and\u00a0blockfl\u00f6te<\/em>\u00a0in German \u2013 is called a \u201crecorder\u201d. It certainly doesn\u2019t record anything.<\/p>\n A Spanish medieval flute (early 14th century).<\/span>\u00a0Manessische Liederhandschrift 848, fol. 423v.<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Historical sources have been confused since its first attestations. The earliest appearance of the word is from 1388, in a list (in Latin) of musical instruments owned by the future King Henry IV. There, it\u2019s documented as \u201ci. fistula nomine Recordour<\/em>\u201d (\u201ca pipe called Recordour\u201d). This makes it look like a proper noun, with the initial character capitalised. In 15th-century England, the word \u201crecordour\u201d, with a lowercase initial, meant a chief legal officer of a city.<\/p>\n There are some theories. The sound of the recorder was compared with that produced by birds\u2019 songs, which are repetitive and, therefore, would develop a \u201crecording\u201d loop \u2013 but that feels far-fetched.<\/p>\n In the past, I have worked on the etymologies of the words\u00a0\u201cocarina\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cgemshorn\u201d, and my focus is now on \u201crecorder\u201d. The reconstruction of the origin stories of these \u201cproper words\u201d could tell us a lot about our ancestors, their mindsets, and their cognitive strategies in naming what was surrounding them.<\/p>\n Provided by\u00a0The Conversation\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read\u00a0the\u00a0original article.<\/a><\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.ancientpages.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/englishwords.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n1. Bird<\/h2>\n
2. Boy<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n3. Girl<\/h2>\n
4. Dog<\/h2>\n
5. Recorder<\/h2>\n
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