Salmoneus wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 12:54 pm
Yes, vast numbers.
I can do a bit better than that, I guess.
Why are some names opaque?
1. Names (I'm assuming you mean the names of people) are high-frequency items. Although sound changes are generally regular, high-frequency items can sometimes exhibit irregular change. This makes it hard to trace etymologies backward with any certainty. You may be left with a situation where you can guess at some etymologies, but sound change has been irregular and hence you can't be certain which guess is correct.
2. Names are often subject to intentionally irregular processes. Many names are diminutive (some are augmentive), and diminution is sometimes highly irregular. In addition, name-giving sometimes follows ritual procedures that are highly unusual in any other area of language - for instance, some cultures combine syllables from the names of parents to produce the names of children, so that, for example, "Joseph" and "Jennifer" may have a child named "Jojen" or "Jenjo". [N.B. "Jennifer", as we've discussed on this board, is a name that has at best a disputed etymology]. This can make it hard to pin down etymologies of individual parts of the name.
3. Names, and naming elements, may be very old - as words fall out of use, names built on those words may be retained. If you don't have records of the earlier stages of the language, it may be impossible to recover these etymologies - or, if the root morphemes are retained only in highly derived forms, it may be possible to guess the etymology, but without any certainty.
4. Names are highly cultural, and hence can easily be borrowed from one language to another (for instance via immigration, or high-status individuals outside the home nation). The etymologies in the source language - sometimes even the existence of the source language! - may not be known to later scholars. For example, most English names are ultimately borrowed from high-status non-Germanic languages - classical Greek and Latin, and Hebrew. Fortunately, all these source languages are themselves well-recorded, so etymologies are usually clear, but that need not be the case. There are some attested Roman names seemingly borrowed from Etruscan, for example, so that their ultimate etymologies are unclear. English names possibly from Etruscan include Adrian, Miles, Tarquin, Virgil, and the surname of Gerardus Mercator (he of the projection) - some of these have intermediate etymologies ('Adrian' is 'from the town of Hadria', 'Mercator' means 'merchant', dealer in 'merx') but their ultimate etymology is unknown - 'Miles' is doubly unknown, as it's apparently 'Milo' (origin unknown) altered by analogy with Latin 'miles', 'soldier', origin unknown but possibly Etruscan.
-----
To take an English example: is the name "Teddy" opaque? Not to scholars. But only because they have excellent historical and linguistic records! It comes from PGmc "audawarduz" - "guard of wealth". But the first element, "audaz", has been lost in English, and indeed almost all modern Germanic languages! And the second element, "wardaz", does survive as English 'ward', but it's no longer a particularly common word, and indeed often now has the opposite meaning (someone guarded). To add further confusion, "Edward" has then been truncated to "Ed", given a seemingly-random first letter to make "Ted", and then given a diminutive suffix. If you just handed someone a dictionary of English and the name "Teddy", they'd struggle not to find it opaque...
So why are some names NOT opaque?
1. As names become opaque, there may be a cultural imperative to replace them with names that aren't opaque. If names are believed to have a magical power, for example - eg if they are believed to 'come true' - there is an incentive to keep names 'up to date' and transparent.
2. Where names are opaque, they may be supplemented and ultimately replaced by meaningful names. To take a European example: "Gaius" would have been opaque to the Romans (though scholars think it's probably ultimately related to "gaudeo", "to rejoice"), but one particular Gaius is instead known to history as "Augustus", "the Majestic One". Lots of rulers and princes in ancient history have non-opaque names of the "Crusher of his enemies", "Appointed by God", "First among nobles" kind, and it's not always clear whether this is actually what their parents would have called them, or whether these are just names they adopted later in life.
3. Even when opaque names are acceptable, there can be a demand for new names. Fashions change. And some cultures require an individual to change their name one or more times during their life, which means there's a lot of names needed. New names can come from other cultures, or from the distant past. But they can also come from ordinary words. Do you want to give your kid a weird name people don't understand that makes them sound like a grandparent already - or a meaningful, beautiful name? Even in our culture, very friendly toward opacity in names (most of our names are etymologisable by scholars, but not by most people who carry them), there's a tendency to replace opaque old names with transparent new ones - there are now fewer Dorises and Amandas, and more Willows and Dawns, than there used to be.
4. Names are nouns. In some languages, very few nouns are opaque, because they're all derived from verbs - in these languages, I won't say that opaque names CAN'T develop, but there's probably a strong tendency for names, like other nouns, to remain transparent.
--------
---------------
If you're looking for specific opaque names, you're most likely to find them, I would guess:
a) in the names of Gods, which are often borrowed and often very old;
b) in names derived from places, as placenames are often borrowed and often very old;
c) in names from little-known cultures
d) in names from cultures with great respect for other, little-known, cultures
e) in popular, informal names, which are more likely to show irregular diminution processes, and less likely to have their older forms recorded
