Often we create new words by combining known words (or commonly known root words), so that the meaning of the new word is at least partially evident when first heard.
Examples include baseball, sunflower, and television (with tele– meaning far and vision being self-evident).
Sometimes a word doesn’t make any sense at all, unless you are familiar with foreign languages, and then the seemingly nonsensical structure or sound of a word becomes more clear.
Take “dandelion,” for example. We can understand “lion” but the flower has nothing to do with a dandy, at least not originally. The word comes from French “dent de lion” (tooth of the lion) and refers to the toothy shape of the leaves.
Similarly the word “friar” had me baffled for a long time. It made no sense in the context of English, and then one day, while looking through a 15th century religious text, I saw an inscription by “Frère _______” (Brother _______) and I realized that “friar” like “dandelion” was simply a poorly pronounced loan word from French.
Change for the Sake of Change?
Another propensity I’ve never really understood, is the English speaker’s obsession with changing names of towns and countries, even when they are easily understood and pronounced. The Japanese people call their country Nippon or Nihon, which is easy to say in English, but we were apparently determined to call the country Japan (an English interpretation of a Chinese reference to Japan) and even insisted that all goods originating from Nippon should be stamped Made in Japan.
The city of Genoa is easily pronounced, as well. It’s nearly the same in English and Italian, and yet English-speaking people saw fit to add an extra letter and call it Genova. Nürnberg became Nuremberg and Danmark became Denmark. I still haven’t looked into why the Netherlands is called Holland, so that should probably be the subject of another blog.