Communication and Languages in Fantasy

[Ban]

I think you have your principles and I respect that - you like looking at the first incarnations of something. Maybe it’s my Britishness or maybe I am just looking at the fact that it would simply not be called York today if it were not for a bunch of tenacious seafaring northerners.

It's not that the Norse didn't have their impact on the names and words, but to put it in terms relating to my own culture, it would be like highlighting the French, but ignoring the Belgic tribes, Romans, Franks, Spanish, Rhinelanders, Austrians, Hollanders and so on. Going back to the roots of a term is simply the most consistent approach to my mind.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Where I live we have names that have changed just as much, but they are in the end still of Latin (or Old West Germanic depending on their time of founding) origin. One city is called Heële in Limburgish. The original Latin name it sprung from? Coriovallum. Migrations and foreign rule combined with time can change toponyms extensively, but the lineage remains.

We have the uninterrupted line in those though. There is a clear break between Eofer and Jor. Proto-West Germanic *ebur- is presumed to have become Old English eofer, hence the original name the settlers would've referred to the settlement would be Eburwic, which is the Latin. I don't see such a link between the Old English and the Old Norse.

 

[Ban]

We have the uninterrupted line in those though. There is a clear break between Eofer and Jor. Proto-West Germanic *ebur- is presumed to have become Old English eofer, hence the original name the settlers would've referred to the settlement would be Eburwic, which is the Latin. I don't see such a link between the Old English and the Old Norse.

I don't quite see your logic. There's a far closer link between Old English and Old Norse than between Latin and any successive West Germanic language.

Perhaps this tangent has gone out of control a little.

 

[Finchbearer]

I can see the linguistic relevance of your way of thinking ban and certainly the factual merit it sometimes offers - but going back to the original post, this is a subject I always find myself drawn to in my own writing. It is pretty much the story of Britain. We are a country built on immigration, and when we talk of a borrowed word here and there, it’s fine to go ahead and say that it has no meaning because it’s an arbitrary bastardisation - but this was real people putting down roots and placing their own meaning and identity on something. This is also the story of my own family tree, I come from a family of immigrants. It’s too dismissive to not understand the importance of identity, however it comes to be.

 

[pmmg]

I thought it was named after the dog.

 

[Ban]

I can see the linguistic relevance of your way of thinking ban and certainly the factual merit it sometimes offers - but going back to the original post, this is a subject I always find myself drawn to in my own writing. It is pretty much the story of Britain. We are a country built on immigration, and when we talk of a borrowed word here and there, it’s fine to go ahead and say that it has no meaning because it’s an arbitrary bastardisation - but this was real people putting down roots and placing their own meaning and identity on something. This is also the story of my own family tree, I come from a family of immigrants. It’s too dismissive to not understand the importance of identity, however it comes to be.

I don't see how you read that into my comments. As stated multiple times now I am from a region that has as many cultural migratory influences as yours. I don't think it's at all fair to read my rather mild etymological criticism as "not understanding the importance of identity." What I did was criticising an undue focus on one mutation on a chain where this is an arbitrary imposition. There are words that are genuinely introduced into English by Norse such as Bull and Troll, if you wish to highlight Norse influence.

 

[Finchbearer]

I did read that from your comments, though I am not saying you’re outright wrong or it’s bad to think that way - I just think it has the potential to bit somewhat shortsighted to not see the relevance of influence of words and meaning whether the origins of said word is borrowed / changed / mutated or not.

There are many many words we use in modern English that derive from old Norse. More in the north here where I live as would be expected.

 

[TheKillerBs]

I don't quite see your logic. There's a far closer link between Old English and Old Norse than between Latin and any successive West Germanic language.

Perhaps this tangent has gone out of control a little haha.

What? You got Eboracum in Latin and Eburakon in Brythonic, with the cum/kon being grammatical hanky-panky. The stem "ebora/ebura" got slightly reduced due to "-az" being the ancient Germanic nominative suffix, so you get ebur- and you add the toponymic suffix -wic denoting some kind of settlement (pronounced witch) to get *Eburwic, which through regular sound change becomes Eoferwic. Ebur- itself has a different meaning between the Brythonic and the Old English, with the latter meaning boar (I don't remember the Brythonic meaning), but it would've been pronounced much the same (ebur village vs (settlement) of ebura).

The Norse root is again a different word, meaning stallion, and pronounced [jor] rather than [eover], and keeping the settlement suffix, though with its corresponding word in Old Norse.

 

[Ban]

What? You got Eboracum in Latin and Eburakon in Brythonic, with the cum/kon being grammatical hanky-panky. The stem "ebora/ebura" got slightly reduced due to "-az" being the ancient Germanic nominative suffix, so you get ebur- and you add the toponymic suffix -wic denoting some kind of settlement (pronounced witch) to get *Eburwic, which through regular sound change becomes Eoferwic. Ebur- itself has a different meaning between the Brythonic and the Old English, with the latter meaning boar (I don't remember the Brythonic meaning), but it would've been pronounced much the same (ebur village vs (settlement) of ebura).

The Norse root is again a different word, meaning stallion, and pronounced [jor] rather than [eover], and keeping the settlement suffix, though with its corresponding word in Old Norse.

Fair, the step from -kon to -wic is significant, but I reckon the difference in meaning of Jór and Eofer are by happenstance not design. There are towns here as well where the interpretations of the names have changed over time, but the name change and the semantic change are separate matters. I read a folktale some time ago wherein it was said that a high lord (be it King Zwentibold or a Holy Roman Emperor) of the time named two villages Sjömmert and Sjènne, because one shimmered and one shone, leading him away from the dark of night. Neither village was actually named for either term of course. The words and the names simply converged. I figure Jórvík wasn't named for stallions either, though the meaning can still have retroactive significance.

Looked it up. The particular version I remembered named a Holy Roman Emperor.

 

[Finchbearer]

Jorvik meant something like wild boar creek.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Fair, the step from -kon to -wic is significant, but I reckon the difference in meaning of Jór and Eofer are by happenstance not design. There are towns here as well where the interpretations of the names have changed over time, but the name change and the semantic change are separate matters. I read a folktale some time ago wherein it was said that a high lord (be it King Zwentibold or a Holy Roman Emperor) of the time named two villages Sjömmert and Sjènne, because one shimmered and one shone, leading him away from the dark of night. Neither village was actually named for either term of course. The words and the names simply converged. I figure Jórvík wasn't named for stallions either, though the meaning can still have retroactive significance.

Looked it up. The particular version I remembered named a Holy Roman Emperor.

Well, I see the point of disagreement at least. I look at just the root. The Roman name, Colonia Eboracum means "colony of ebur" with the ebur meaning something like yew trees. The Angles which settled there called it *Eburwic meaning "village of ebur" with the ebur meaning boar. Due to regular sound changes it was Eoferwic by the time we have records of it, which the Norse Vikings took and renamed Jorvik meaning "village of jor" with the jor meaning stallions. The reason I looked at the meaning of the word is because if the Old English and Old Norse were cognates I'd grant that the root remains the same. But the roots aren't the same, neither by sound nor meaning.

If you take the add-ons "acum/akon" and "wic/vik" then certainly the Old Norse and Old English seem more similar, but I don't, so I guess agree to disagree? As you said earlier, this tangent might've spun a bit out of control.

 

[TheKillerBs]

One thing I learned while going on this rabbit hole though is that the Normans for some reason didn't record the Norse name and instead recorded it as Everwic and Euruic, so that seems like something to consider when you have one group of people conquering a territory from someone who conquered it from someone else.

 

[Finchbearer]

^Romanisation is one solid example of that.