Word/name discussion taken out of the kitten thread

[lonelocust]

This got totally out of topic in the name-my-kitten thread, so I just thought I'd start a new thread here. (Regarding if the name "Fresia" means "Frost')

haha, I'm coincidentally from Friesland, The Netherlands! I'm sure the word mightve derived from that, but Friesland literally means Frostland in the Dutch language ^_^ languages are weird! A word may mean something in one language, and something else in another!

Helloooo *waves northward*

It's a coincidental homophone though. It is not named freeze-land, just as it's not named frieze-land, but after a very very old word that's probably cognate with "frizz" and "frizeren". Consider if an area were named Vorstland after a king of the past; many might understandably think it meant frost-land when it meant prince-land.

http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/fries3

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Frisian&allowed_in_frame=0

This is the result not of a word meaning different things in different languages but rather the same thing in different languages. (English, Dutch, and Frisian had not diverged when the name is first attested, so the original word would have been "West Germanic" rather than any of the three.)

One can still of course make an own name of Fresia (or whatever spelling variants) intending to reference frost. And a name really means what the namer intends. But it's origin doesn't have to do with frost is all.

 

[Elfilou]

Ahhh. Well that's interesting! I just asked my dad and you're totally right. He also told me of a few other words is the Frisian language that look like "fries/friezen - als in frieskou of friezer" but that arent. Like Frosk, which actually means frog. When you compare that to the Dutch kikker its pretty weird loll

 

[lonelocust]

Dutch and English spelling are confusing in separate ways. Dutch has so many homonyms because the spelling is standardized, so when pronunciation wanders together so does spelling and then it's easy to mistake words for each other. Then English wears its etymology on its sleeve and you end up with tons of homophones that aren't spelled anything alike and good luck if you didn't grow up hearing the word spoken aloud. 

 I always think of "Friesland" as "Freeze-land" even though I know it isn't because it seems to make sense.

Speaking of frogs, and words being weird across languages instead of within them. I also always think of kicking frogs when I think of "kick" in English or "kikker" in Dutch, even though they're unrelated and "kikker" came from the sound frogs make. Now I'm going to add cold little frogs to my mental image when I think of Friesland. Our brains make the bridges where they can. I remember a girl who spoke I think Slovenian who was learning Dutch. In Slovenian "kip" (according to her, but I also just asked Google Translate) means "statue", so now she always thinks of a statue of a chicken.

Also I just saw this smiley I should have used in the other thread: 

 

 

[Elfilou]

Language is weird, but very interesting. I speak Spanish, English and Dutch fluently, and speak German and Frisian as well (those with alot of effort though!) and I've always thought it's rather interesting how some words are exactly the same, some look alot alike - and some are completely different. The more you learn though. Kinda funny how I've always thought Friesland meant something else when I live there myself