Zompist Bboard Again

Any interesting folk etymologies in your conlangs? I have a couple from two of the languages I'm working on right now.

The Lashqumite language is named for the city-state of Lashqum (Laškūm), which ~500 years ago was the epicenter of the culture (and eventually an empire, which has since fallen). Lashqum was not originally founded by the Qeymitic Lashqumites but by Proto-Maritime speakers, who named the city *ɹájsə́ʔkʌ̀w, which means roughly "it storms there." The Lashqumites borrowed this name as Laškūm, reannalyzing it as a locative from the verbal root √L-Š-K, "avenge, take vengeance." (For the curious, the <q> in the Romanization comes from how a fourth language borrowed the name from a third language.)

A second folk etymology involves the name of my main con-culture, the Shoryani. Shoryani has many words (particularly place names) from one or more substrate languages that I haven't actually developed, one of which is the name of nation itself: Šoryān. The Shoryani believe this comes from √Š-R-Y, "bow." Aside from the fact that CoCCān is not a derivation that is used anywhere else, this can be pretty easily disproven by the fact that the cognate in a closely related language (that is as yet unnamed) is Šuryōn rather than the expected Ṯuryōn (Shoryani merged Proto-Qeymitic /ʃ/ and /θ/, and the Proto-Qeymitic root was *√Θ-R-Y). (Fun little aside: Shoryani's unnamed sister is the only Qeymitic language to preserve *θ as /θ/, but Shoryani is the only Qeymitic language to preserve Proto-Qeymitic's lateral obstruents as lateral obstruents.)

If it's not apparent, the Qeymitic languages are based on triliteral roots, like Semitic. It's taken me about five years to actually develop a system I was satisfied with...

That first example you've given is oddly similar to a folk etymology of mine:

The city of Lihmelīnyā /lix.me.ˈliːn.jaː/ (the capital of my primary con-kingdom) contains two analyzable parts: lihme- and -līnyā. The latter is fairly transparent. It appears in other city names (with the vowels in various other qualities and lengths due to a dialectal change), including the smaller nearby Betelényā (whose name uncontroversially means "city of magnolias"). It's an old root meaning "place, city, site" and is common in city and town names. The first part is more opaque and the etymology is generally considered to be unknown. But it bears a resemblance to the verb líhami /ˈli.xa.mi/ "I avenge", which has led to a folk etymology that Lihmelīnyā means "city of vengeance" or "city of retribution". As badass as that sounds, it's unlikely to be the origin (whence the -me-?), especially considering that the city started out as a small farming village and took centuries to gain its reputation as a powerful, and sometimes violent place. There wasn't much vengeance going around in the early farming days. Even now the city is often referred to as "city of vengeance": wáras* líhayās.

*the modern Lihmelinyan word for "city", from a different root ultimately meaning "gathering, arrangement".

The method i use for deriving new proper names prevents me from cleanly separating the true etymologies from the folk etymologies. The most eye-catching names are those in Late Andanese, a language with only 30 syllables whose proper names sound even more repetitive than one would expect of such a small phonology.

http://www.frathwiki.com/Late_Andanese# ... e_wordplay

Traditionally, I derived the names from a mathematical formula since I didnt have many words in the dictionary when I came up with the early names. Thus, I told myself I would come up with the etymologies later. I still havent really gotten to that point, but I was able to provide a few dozen possible readings for the boy's name Kukukukukukuku.

With other names, I start with a list of ~7000 or so random CVCV sequences and put them through the sound changes needed to get to the language I want. I may see a possible meaning right from the beginning, because those random CVCV sequences are often duplicates of existing words, but when I get to the language I want I notice it collides with something else. So which is the true etymology? If it's a name I want to exist in only one language, I usually pick the one that would be transparent to the speakers of that language, and throw out my original etymology entirely.

I do this a lot with placenames ... e.g. a river name that I was originally intending to be unanalyzable merged with the word for "hill" in the Gold language, and so I decided to just call it the Hill river and let the name be transparent in each of the languages of the people who live there. A different word .... a term used in government ... also merged with the same word for hill (it's just /yû/), so i decided to use "hill" for that and also make it transparent in every language.

Almost forgot Mipatatatatai, which is meaningful in two languages, and therefore can be considered a type of folk etymology. It was supposed to mean "land of the ruling children of Tata" in Late Andanese and "playful visionary children of Tata" in Bābākiam, but i discovered an error, since the Late Andanese word for child is not */pata/, and getting a new etymology is going to be difficult because /pa/ is not a common syllable in Late Andanese. Most likely, it will need to use the clothing prefix /pa/, which makes the double meaning less interesting.