What if Old Names for Gods had Survived into English?

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 เม.ย. 2024
  • In this video, I explore the hypothetical topic of how words for older gods (and other religious concepts) would have sounded if they had natively developed in English.
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ความคิดเห็น • 541

  • @DavidCowie2022
    @DavidCowie2022 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +522

    "Freyja also means lady."
    Thinks: cognate with Frau!

    • @midtskogen
      @midtskogen 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +34

      And cognate with 'first' and 'prime'.

    • @Ethan7_7
      @Ethan7_7 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +6

      My brain too

    • @AutoReport1
      @AutoReport1 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +9

      People confuse Frigg and Freyja all the time.

    • @arionthedeer7372
      @arionthedeer7372 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

      @@midtskogenwhat

    • @rtlgrmpf
      @rtlgrmpf 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +16

      Guess what: "Frau" originally meant "lady"!
      But the counterpart "fro" =Lord became "froh" =happy. Weird.

  • @Edward24081
    @Edward24081 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +240

    I used to live near a village called 'Woodnesborough' - 'Woden's hill' and the 'Wood-' part is homophonous with 'wood'.

    • @Theo-oh3jk
      @Theo-oh3jk 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +18

      Is it pronounced "woonsbruh" /'wʊnzbɹə/?

    • @midtskogen
      @midtskogen 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +17

      There is actually an English adjective "wood" meaning "violently mad", cf. Norse oðr, Proto-Norse woðaz with the same meaning and regarded to be the origin of the name Odin/Wodan.

    • @thomas4841
      @thomas4841 23 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@Theo-oh3jk I wikipedia'd it - apparently it's /ˈwɪnzbrə/ because of course it f**king is.

    • @rikospostmodernlife
      @rikospostmodernlife 22 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      ​@@midtskogen "violently mad"
      So, ran Amok?

    • @kendyl8878
      @kendyl8878 21 วันที่ผ่านมา +6

      that's interesting bc my mom used to live in a town called Winnsboro. the "winns" is pronounced exactly like how we pronounce "wednesday" (where the "wednes" has the same root as "woodnes") so maybe they are the same town name but evolved in different ways. But idk bc it might just come from the old word "wynn"

  • @orodes_1
    @orodes_1 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +251

    Please keep making these, hypothetical construction is so much fun.

    • @irgendwer3610
      @irgendwer3610 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +13

      literally linguistic sandbox fun

    • @eyellow6999
      @eyellow6999 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      I FINNA SCREAM YES FR

  • @chris_wick
    @chris_wick 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +131

    I think it's interesting that one of the more common names for Odin in England (just based on theophoric place names) was "Grim" -- going backwards up the etymology tree you get Old English grīma, Proto-Germanic *grīmô, Proto-Indo-European *gʰrey- ... and if you go down a DIFFERENT tree you get the Greek χρῑ́ω (khrio), becoming χριστός (khristos), becoming "Christ" in modern English
    An unexpected cognate to say the least!

    • @ekmad
      @ekmad 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +32

      And then there's that old story about Odin being sacrificed in an elevated position on a wooden tree. Sounds familiar!

    • @real_nosferatu
      @real_nosferatu 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

      Grima Wormtongue

    • @Vizivirag
      @Vizivirag 23 วันที่ผ่านมา +9

      Every road does really lead back to Odin @OverlySarcasticProductions

    • @LobertERee
      @LobertERee 15 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      I'm curious what Khristos would become in English, but I only get as far as reducing it to gʰrey + tos (past participle ending). I want to know what that -σ/s- is doing in there.

  • @haukzi
    @haukzi 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +57

    We use freyja in compound words with that meaning in Icelandic, húsfreyja is a maid and flugfreyja a stewardess.

  • @letMeSayThatInIrish
    @letMeSayThatInIrish 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +192

    "Ven" in modern (new) Norwegian still means "beautiful".

    • @AmyThePuddytat
      @AmyThePuddytat 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +24

      ​@@marryof995I don't know why you'd think that. That has a completely different initial. It's related to “sheen” in English.

    • @se6369
      @se6369 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +13

      Yep, also spelt væn

    • @user-do5zk6jh1k
      @user-do5zk6jh1k 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +16

      Oddly, we have "vain" and "vanity" in English, but those words are unrelated in etymology to Venus/Wenos

    • @ErikHolten
      @ErikHolten 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

      You can hear it in use in the opening line of Norway's 2024 entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, _Ulveham_ by the band Gåte: "Eg var meg så ven og fager ei møy" = "I was so beautiful and fair a maiden"

    • @andeve3
      @andeve3 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

      kjære vene!

  • @adam.bolivar
    @adam.bolivar 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +240

    I like Lūca for Loki because the Old English lūcan, in addition to meaning "to lock", also means "to intertwine" or "to tangle", so Lūca would mean something like "Tangler"--a reference to his invention of the fishing net as well as his skill as a schemer. It also gives him a spiderlike quality--a likeness with other trickster deities such as Anansi and Iktomi. The Faroese word for cobweb, "lokkanet", means Lokke's (Loki's) web, as does the Swedish "lockanät".

    • @j_fenrir
      @j_fenrir 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +14

      That detail about "lokkanet" is so cool! The way history and culture survives in language always fascinates me

    • @gwest3644
      @gwest3644 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +10

      It seems like the modern English surname "Locke" might come from lock + an agentive, so English Loki could just be Locke. Also, the "Tue" spelling for English Tyr seems like it's taken directly from "Tuesday", which seems like it has that E from a fossilized genitive, so the actual spelling might be more like "Tu" or "Tew"

    • @XD152awesomeness
      @XD152awesomeness 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      Is this where the name Lucas comes from? Or is that another origin?

    • @adam.bolivar
      @adam.bolivar 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +7

      The name Lucas appears to come from Latin, so I don't think it's related to Loki/Luca.

    • @RandomNonsense1985
      @RandomNonsense1985 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

      Lūca lives on the second floor…

  • @bartmannn6717
    @bartmannn6717 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +105

    So satisfying to learn about the common ancestor of "Zeus" and "Jupiter", who sound nothing alike: "Dyews ph²ter". I don't know why, but I like that I know this now.

    • @mr.booboo1
      @mr.booboo1 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +9

      satisfying is the right word

    • @kf7872
      @kf7872 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +4

      Same!

    • @Murglie
      @Murglie 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +17

      There is another universe where Jupiter is spelt Deupater. Our universe's Catholic church probably would have hated that

    • @mr.booboo1
      @mr.booboo1 23 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      @@Murglie suppose the catholic church never would develop from that linguistic permanence. say your gods name, give them power!

    • @georgereevesjr8289
      @georgereevesjr8289 20 วันที่ผ่านมา +4

      When you write them all out next to each other you can really see how they got Zeus and Jupiter from it

  • @villeporttila5161
    @villeporttila5161 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +241

    At some point I think you can get rid of the 'I might make a mistake' disclaimer, your videos are more accurate than basically anything on this subject on the Internet

    • @EvenRoyalsNeedToUrinate
      @EvenRoyalsNeedToUrinate 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +67

      But that's his most important trademark, he's basically using that disclaimer before his name like others would have a 'Dr.' 😅

    • @Azelf89
      @Azelf89 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +25

      Always got to be careful with these things though.

    • @rezazazu
      @rezazazu 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +9

      My thoughts exactly! He's so humble yet so brilliant.

    • @EvincarOfAutumn
      @EvincarOfAutumn 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +8

      @@EvenRoyalsNeedToUrinate “Dr.”, short for “Disclaimer”

    • @ekmad
      @ekmad 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +10

      More than anything I think it's to be careful unless new research appears in the future. You could make a video in 2024 that could, potentially, be complete nonsense by 2030. Doesn't impact us in the here and now of course.

  • @matthewcarter2500
    @matthewcarter2500 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +29

    This was wonderful, Simon. Calling Odin "Wooden" is mind-blowing. And as an American yod-dropper, please coalesce your yods all you want.

    • @antonyreyn
      @antonyreyn 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      Also wrong as we have the modern anglo saxon evolution of Woden in Wednes (day) so it needs no conjecture. Cheers from Mercia

    • @barnsleyman32
      @barnsleyman32 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

      @@antonyreyn there are also placenames named after woden which ended up with other vowels in them, like wensley, wansdyke and wanstead

  • @LyNguyen33739
    @LyNguyen33739 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +60

    I would like to input that the Great Vowel Shift fails for [u:] before labial and velar consonants, as evidenced by rúm -> room, brúcan -> brook, súcan -> suck, thúma -> thumb. Therefore, I would expect Lúca to become Looker or Lucker instead.

  • @volpilh
    @volpilh 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +29

    Regarding the point of Brahman/barrow, there actually is a cognate deity much, well, "closer to home", namely the Irish Brigit (Gallo-Roman and Romano-British "Brigantia"), whose name literally translate to 'august one' or 'exalted one'. The name is also associated with Burgundy (and as such also the Danish isle of Bornholm), as well as the Pre-Roman kingdom of the Brigantes, the area of which approximately coincided with most of the Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Cumberland. The deity Brigit is also associated with the Saint Brigid (via some synchronism, I imagine), it seems, but I must admit my knowledge of this topic only reches as far as the Wiktionary and Wikipedia articles do.

  • @aureltoniniimperatorecomun4029
    @aureltoniniimperatorecomun4029 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +50

    English is incredible conservative in the pronunciation of semivowel w

  • @jacobparry177
    @jacobparry177 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +68

    Always find it interesting to learn which PIE words ended up in which modern languages. Of all those mentioned in the vid, only one of them came down to Welsh natively (I.e. without being borrowed), said being dyews, which gave us Welsh Duw /dɨu̯/.
    Though we do have Welsh versions of a few of the mentioned gods, Gwener, from one of the Latin declension of Venus. Jupiter/Jove = iau. In fact, most days of the week in Welsh come from the Roman gods:
    Monday - Dydd Llun - lunar day
    Dydd mawrth - Mars day
    D. Mercher - Mercury
    D. Iau - Jupiter
    D. Gwener - Venus
    D. Sadwrn - Saturn day
    Sunday- D. Sul - solar day

    • @TheAnalyticalEngine
      @TheAnalyticalEngine 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +4

      However, one of the Welsh words meaning "fair" or "beautiful" is gwyn (or it's feminine form, gwen), so that might be connected more directly to the PIE root

    • @jacobparry177
      @jacobparry177 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@TheAnalyticalEngine Was thinking about mentioning gwen, because, obviously, it sounds a lot like Simon's reconstruction of what an English venus might have sounded like. But I don't think any of gwen/gwyn's PIE cognates appeared in the video. Though I might have missed something

    • @davidmandic3417
      @davidmandic3417 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      @@jacobparry177 It's a different root... gwyn is from Proto-Celtic *windos, as in the name of the fort on Hadrian's wall, Vindolanda, which corresponds to Welsh gwyn + llan.

    • @shanephelps3898
      @shanephelps3898 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@jacobparry177 @TheAnalyticalEngine Yes, I too was tempted to connect it to Gwen......but was wondering if that means ''fair'' refering to hair and/or complexion? ''Gwyn'' in modern welsh means ''white''

    • @bngrbngr4416
      @bngrbngr4416 21 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      Thats interesting, cause in Irish only Mon, Tues and Saturday are Latin. And only Jan, Feb, March, April and July for the months.

  • @buurmeisje
    @buurmeisje 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +54

    Interesting how the 'frow' did survive in Dutch and German as 'vrouw' and 'Frau' respectively.

    • @staffanlindstrom576
      @staffanlindstrom576 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      In Swedish it is "fru".

    • @buurmeisje
      @buurmeisje 25 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@staffanlindstrom576 I thought woman is Swedish is something like 'kvinna'

    • @staffanlindstrom576
      @staffanlindstrom576 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +4

      @@buurmeisje Correct, "fru" means "wife". So "my wife" is "min fru".

    • @buurmeisje
      @buurmeisje 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      @@staffanlindstrom576 Ah interesting, in Dutch and German it can mean both woman and wife. Also another interesting interaction, is that the cognate of the English word 'wife' in Dutch, which is 'wijf', is a pejorative, similar in meaning to 'bitch'.

    • @staffanlindstrom576
      @staffanlindstrom576 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      @@buurmeisje Interesting. There is an obsolete Swedish word "viv" which also means "wife" with nothing pejorative about it. If you know Swedish and German you can often guess the meaning of written Dutch, the spoken language is something else. The same with Danish.

  • @gammamaster1894
    @gammamaster1894 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +54

    2 seconds in and I already know it's a banger

  • @AmyThePuddytat
    @AmyThePuddytat 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +30

    People are excessively keen on making Jupiter a Germanic god too. Tiw/Týr is from the o-grade form of the ‘sky’ word, which seems to have just meant ‘heavenly one’ or ‘god’ in general, not the zero-grade form that was paired with the word for ‘father’ and seems to have been the name of the head of the pantheon.
    If Tiw/Týr were consistently used as a name, or if that name had some suggestion of being a celestial, fatherly or kingly god, then OK maybe. But in the Norse sources, ‘týr’ is as frequently a word for ‘god’ as it is the name of a particular one, because it’s found in a dozen names of Odin. For example, Odin is called Hangaguð or Hangatýr, both meaning ‘hanged god’. By contrast, Týr as a unique character doesn’t really do anything but get nommed twice by canines. Maybe his role reduced over time, or maybe he was never a particularly big deal.
    If Tiw/Týr being called just ‘god’ makes him Zeus, then what about Freyr? His name is just ‘lord’. Doesn’t that make him sound like the top dude?
    In Latin, the feminine form of the word is found as ‘Bona Dea’ (‘the good goddess’). All it would take would be for the ‘Bona’ to be dropped (perhaps permitted by some other word such as ‘diva’ or ‘domina’ becoming the ordinary word for goddesses in general, just as ‘guð’ and ‘ás’ took over from ‘týr’ in Old Norse), and ‘Dea’ would then a proper noun referring to her. But no one thinks that she is Jupiter or the queen of all the gods.
    Tiw/Týr isn’t Dyḗus ph₂tḗr.

    • @pattheplanter
      @pattheplanter 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +7

      Saga writer: tl;dr Tiw long, didn't read.

  • @TheSeanHyden
    @TheSeanHyden 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +18

    Venus In Welsh is Gwener. Dydd Gwener (Venus Day) is our Friday. All our other days are named after the planets.

    • @ekmad
      @ekmad 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      The planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury etc.) were Gods before they were planets though.

    • @NathanDudani
      @NathanDudani 17 วันที่ผ่านมา

      ​@@ekmadikr

  • @AutoReport1
    @AutoReport1 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +10

    Shakespeare uses the coincidence between wood and wood in midsummer nights dream. In his day there survived a wood meaning "mad, possessed".

    • @pattheplanter
      @pattheplanter 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      Still was in Yorkshire in the 19th century "1828 WOOD: mad, rhyming with food. This word is rarely used." W. Carr, Dialect of Craven (ed. 2) p. 268

  • @strongestmaninmurfreesboro
    @strongestmaninmurfreesboro 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +8

    Your vids have been slappin recently

  • @karlpoppins
    @karlpoppins 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +384

    Come on, Simon, you do not need to be apologetic to proverbial linguistic "flat-earthers". If devout Hindus disagree with the idea of PIE, this doesn't mean they as people don't deserve respect, but their views certainly do not deserve any respect whatsoever. Imagine if an evolutionary biologist had to apologise to creationists - that would be ridiculous.

    • @johnantony797
      @johnantony797 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +58

      Hard agree. Not all devout Hindus are like this either, mind.

    • @karlpoppins
      @karlpoppins 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +67

      @@johnantony797 I can imagine. I will say, though, the meme status of nationalists from the Indian subcontinent is legendary, especially the people claiming that all languages come from Tamil or Sanskrit, and I'm sure there's a lot of religious people from the area that have nothing to do with that sort of nonsense, just like there are devout Christians who don't believe in young earth creationism.

    • @JoelDZ
      @JoelDZ 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +17

      If education is for everyone, then it is also for those who have beliefs we heavily disagree with. This is not the place to convince Sanskrit "flat-earthers" that their beliefs are wrong, it's a place to learn about old names for Gods and historical sound changes. I say we should welcome as many people as we can to this place.

    • @joshuahillerup4290
      @joshuahillerup4290 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +47

      Given how Indian politics has been moving lately I think showing a Hindu supremacist deference is a bad thing

    • @sweeterthananything
      @sweeterthananything 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@joshuahillerup4290as with other current events, people interested in science/humanities tend to assume “no news is good news” relative to their media consumption habits, until we all have historical hindsight to say X was a very bad and predictable thing

  • @Queenfloofles
    @Queenfloofles 20 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    It's so strange, I was talking about this to a colleague at work today how older concepts are contained within modern words, speaking about God's names in particular. Then I run your video about it this evening. Thanks Simon, I always enjoy your videos.

  • @JonBrase
    @JonBrase 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +8

    ISTR that Venus/Aphrodite was not an original member of the IE pantheon. Before borrowings from Greek culture, Venus was an innovated deity unique to Rome, later synchretized heavily with Aphrodite. Aphrodite had origins in middle-Eastern paganism as Astarte and was imported by the Greeks.
    So while you can carry the PIE root forward, there was no deity attached to the root to cement it into the language.

  • @CAMacKenzie
    @CAMacKenzie 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

    Barrow, but also Berg, mountain in German. My Scottish grandmother pronounced the d in Wednesday, Wednzdi.

    • @pixelfrenzy
      @pixelfrenzy 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      This is still a typical Scottish way of pronouncing it.

  • @SEDATEDSlothRecords6083
    @SEDATEDSlothRecords6083 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +15

    I love to discover old roots of words and speaking German and even Polish makes it so easy to understand many indo-European. "Ogien" for example in Polish is related to the snaskrit word "Agni" i just realized and its pretty fun to always have a clue still after thousands of years

    • @shanephelps3898
      @shanephelps3898 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +7

      Yes, I love these too. ''Ignis'' is Latin for fire (so looks close to ''Agni''. In Romany the word for fire is ''Yog'' (though,i think, some dialects have ''Og'') and Urdu ''Aag'' ...being descended from Sanskrit. Interesting comparison is English-Polish....''Night''-''Noc'' and ''Might''-''Moc''...and the Old English word ''Rada'' is the same in Polish

    • @SEDATEDSlothRecords6083
      @SEDATEDSlothRecords6083 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      @@shanephelps3898 cool comment. Always a pleasure to learn. My polish is kinda rusty so.. rada means "happiness" in this one or I'm mistaken?

    • @grammarpenguin
      @grammarpenguin 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

      ​@@SEDATEDSlothRecords6083 It's a different word that means council or counsel, like the Ukrainian parliament. In Old English IIRC it was "ræd" (in modern German "Rat"). I think Slavic borrowed it from Germanic in medieval times though. Usually for real cognates the Germanic people mess up all the PIE consonants :)

    • @SEDATEDSlothRecords6083
      @SEDATEDSlothRecords6083 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      @@grammarpenguin ahh Rada like German "Rat". Radosc in polish mean happiness that's why I assumed rada has to do with it

    • @wiseSYW
      @wiseSYW 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      in Javanese only the 'gni' part survives becoming 'geni' (fire)

  • @markhughes7927
    @markhughes7927 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +6

    Awen/Aven - ‘aphprodite’ in Welsh!

  • @tsgillespiejr
    @tsgillespiejr 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +24

    Hey man, what you do with your yods is nobody's business but yours ✊🏻 stay strong, brother

  • @corrinflakes9659
    @corrinflakes9659 22 วันที่ผ่านมา +4

    Maybe “Wooden” as Odin would cause the word for things made of wood to be described as “Woodic”, similar to “Metallic”.

  • @MenelionFR
    @MenelionFR 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    Thank you so much! It was exceptionally interesting to me as a Scandinavian gods worshiper.

  • @Ithirahad
    @Ithirahad 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +88

    In the name of Wooden, Thunder, Lock, 'Fro and Fry... seems a bit undignified :P

    • @NicholasShanks
      @NicholasShanks 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +16

      You forgot Wen

    • @user-qd8yy9lc4g
      @user-qd8yy9lc4g 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +38

      Seems so to you, but, for a person who believes thunder is an epic guy smacking his mallet, not so much

    • @digitalbrentable
      @digitalbrentable 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +34

      I think you mean they lack a certain exotic mystique that compared to the foreign language versions. But these reconstructed English language equivalents sound as commonplace as the name we know sounded in their own languages. Kind of nice to reapise how down to earth and familiar these mythological figures were

    • @waelisc
      @waelisc 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +21

      "by thunder!" is probably a bit old-fashioned now, but still works

    • @ThW5
      @ThW5 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      @@NicholasShanks No, no, 'e speaks another dialect, if the spelling is common English, it looks amazingly like "Woeden"(Dutch Spelling) the form Middle Dutch SHOULD have been using if talking about the Lord of Valhalla had been a common thing (In between Old Dutch "Wuodan" and modern Dutch "Woen", nowadays only used to indicate the day before Donder (=Thunder) day ), instead of "Wen".

  • @16tonw8
    @16tonw8 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    I love these types of videos, and I dearly hope you make more!

  • @proto_charlotte
    @proto_charlotte 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

    i absolutely adore these kinds of videos! please make more!

  • @ksbrook1430
    @ksbrook1430 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    Thank you. That was fun.
    I also appreciated your aside thought about an alternate word treen, had the use of the god name Wooden continued in English.

  • @JohnWayne-bm1ty
    @JohnWayne-bm1ty 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +8

    Really cool video as usually!

  • @alicelund147
    @alicelund147 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +24

    Vän in relatively modern Swedish is Beautiful.

    • @jefficah1295
      @jefficah1295 20 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      But just to be clear, not current Swedish? Vän means friend

    • @alicelund147
      @alicelund147 20 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@jefficah1295 Current but less in everyday conversation (It is pronounced diffidently friend is "vänn" and beautiful is "vään").

    • @elias.t
      @elias.t 19 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      @@jefficah1295 Vän (friend) and vän (beautiful) are homographs (but not homophones).

  • @MazCat
    @MazCat 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    Well this is my favourite video of yours!! Love hypothetical stuff.

  • @glitteraapje7329
    @glitteraapje7329 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +54

    wake up babe new simon roper just dropped!!

  • @EFO841
    @EFO841 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    I love these types of videos!

  • @vitamins-and-iron
    @vitamins-and-iron 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    another really interesting vid. cheers

  • @tylerdhoore624
    @tylerdhoore624 18 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    The comments about Thor's name meaning thunder blew my mind as in Dutch the word for Thursday is donderdag (literally thunderday) which is very interesting. I knew there was an association with Thor but I didn't realise donder/thunder is an actual translation of his name!

  • @yes_head
    @yes_head 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    Very fun. Thanks, Simon.

  • @kf7872
    @kf7872 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    Interesting thought experiment, thanks Simon 👍. The bit on Jupiter/Jove etc gave me a proper 'penny dropping' moment.
    P.S. Just noticed the excitable comments. Fwiw, put me in the 'Simon's slide is good way to address the issue'.

  • @fangsandfolklore8795
    @fangsandfolklore8795 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Thank you for these excellent videos.

  • @andeve3
    @andeve3 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +13

    The verbs "ween" and "win" are distantly related to the root of Venus, I ween. There could also be English dialect words related to it through borrowings from Old Norse "vænn", "vænleikr" or "vinr".

    • @_Dovar_
      @_Dovar_ 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      What about English "to seize" and German "sieg", maybe originally meaning "victory"?

    • @PGouges35
      @PGouges35 26 วันที่ผ่านมา

      I see Guinevere

    • @andeve3
      @andeve3 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      There actually is one archaic English word related to "vænn" via the related noun "ván" or "vón" in the form of "wone" or "wonne" (dwelling, wealth, house).

  • @locutorest
    @locutorest 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    Thanks, simon!

  • @IntelVoid
    @IntelVoid 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    These videos are great. And it's fun to try to predict the outcome while watching, before seeing what you got to with more attention to detail.
    Perhaps you could do this with other categories, like Latin words for trees (or something less random - endonymic country names?).

  • @patriciabristow-johnson5951
    @patriciabristow-johnson5951 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    This is fascinating!!!

  • @orecula
    @orecula 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    Actually, ū only diphthongized to /aw/ before coronals, which is why its "room" and not "roum", so the equivalent of Loki woukd likely be Looker not Loucker
    In addition, the ONorse suffix -i usually came from PGerm -ô, which became OEng -a, so Loki would come from **lukô. This would be OE *Loca, and Modern *Loke :)
    Great video though, keep up the good work!

  • @DellDuckfan313
    @DellDuckfan313 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +11

    A number of Latin words found their way into German and Dutch via Proto-Germanic. It might be interesting to reconstruct what the word Venus would be like in modern English if it had made its way from Latin, through Proto-Brittonic, into Old English. Or alternatively, from Latin through Proto-Germanic, into Old English. At least for me, the significance of the name is lost if you ignore the Latin context in which it gained its significance.

    • @SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands
      @SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      Germanic by that time. Germanic is at least as old as Latin...specially Dutch is very conservative when it comes to pronunciation of words...Keizer, Kaas, Vijver Zolder Kelder Paard ( Pereferid = side-horse), there are more Latin words hiding in Dutch. For Germanic words hiding in Italian...look for words having to do with meat and pigs... and food..

  • @Aleblood
    @Aleblood 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I like this video a lot, what a great idea.

  • @nicholaslemosdecarvalho5328
    @nicholaslemosdecarvalho5328 26 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Awesome video!

  • @LimeyRedneck
    @LimeyRedneck 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Another banger!! 🤠💜

  • @jamesmckean3221
    @jamesmckean3221 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    By Jove!

  • @frankharr9466
    @frankharr9466 16 วันที่ผ่านมา

    That is, in fact, interesting. Thank you.

  • @David_Palacios
    @David_Palacios 20 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    For words such as the reflex of *wenh1os you should keep in mind that by the Old English period any z-stem noun had just as much of a chance of descending from the PG “main stem” as it would of had of descending from the oblique stem. The PIE genitive singular was *wenh1esos, which would have yielded PG **winiziz due to metaphony. So the Old English word could have either descended from the main stem **wen- or the oblique stem **win-, but from what I’ve seen there seems to be more of a tendency towards the oblique stem, so both the Old English and Modern English words would most likely be something like **win.

  • @dbass4973
    @dbass4973 25 วันที่ผ่านมา

    great video thank you

  • @Bjorn_Algiz
    @Bjorn_Algiz 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    Interesting and informative to say the least 🤔

  • @SamAronow
    @SamAronow 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +11

    6:54 Wooden very much _is_ worshipped a god in Los Angeles.

  • @RoundHeadedMoron
    @RoundHeadedMoron 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +7

    Found this page while scrolling endlessly.. glad i did great videos. Interesting

  • @calvinrollins4957
    @calvinrollins4957 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    This is great!

  • @NThomas-xj7bj
    @NThomas-xj7bj 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Thanks for another interesting video, Simon. :)
    A few notes you may find interesting.
    Your Wen for Venus reminds me of the Welsh wen meaning white or pure. Found in Bronwen.
    For Tuesday : the Finnish word taivas means sky. Also geal is the Scottish Gaelic word for white.
    For Wednesday : Woden had a dialectic form Weden.
    For Loki : consider that Lucifer is supposed to be the origin of luck.

  • @tristanholderness4223
    @tristanholderness4223 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    I'm not sure what specific morphology you're suggesting for OE lūca (< **lūkô? an an-stem from the verb *lūkaną?), but wouldn't we expect a-mutation to have applied here just as it does with loc < luką (not that this doesn't happen in the verb *lūkaną > lūcan, but here the high vowel has likely been restored by analogy to the 3rd person present, and indeed many of the other verb forms, where the stem is not followed by an a)?
    That would give something like OE lōca > ME loke? look?

    • @LemoUtan
      @LemoUtan 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      Not to mention Latin lux (and hence its bearer, lucifer)

    • @tristanholderness4223
      @tristanholderness4223 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

      @@LemoUtan lux and lucifer are unrelated. Remember that because of Grim's Law Latin c corresponds to Germanic h. The English cognate (sensu lato) of lux is "light" (< Old English lēoht, note that gh is a Middle English spelling convention and was not actually voiced)
      It is related to Latin luxus (whence English luxury) though, where a suffixed -s caused the expected g to devoice

  • @edwardlloyd9468
    @edwardlloyd9468 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    The English word win has a secondary meaning such as appealing as in the old Bible expression winsome words. So it may have survived but began to die out in the mid 20th century.

  • @ethanpintar5454
    @ethanpintar5454 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    The reason the Týr/“Tue” god in Germanic mythology isn’t as central as Zeus or Jupiter is because it likely isn’t the same god. As you noted Zeus and Jupiter come from “Dyews”, the name of the Indo-European Sky Father god, while Týr comes from “deywos”, the generic term for a god. They are of course cognate but are two different words in Proto-Indo-European. So the name Týr or Tue seemingly comes from a deity being referred to simply as “the god”. So it could be a descendant of the god Dyews but I don’t see how that’s necessary, it was seemingly a different figure that for whatever reason started being referred to in a general way simply as “the god”. Roman sources identify him with the Roman god Mars in fact.

  • @LisandroLorea
    @LisandroLorea 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    I know in the culture of most Germanic nations (those who call themselves "Western") there seems to be a trend where the speaker is held accountable for the emotional effect of their words in the listener, even if there no ill intention, and no matter how unreasonable it is for the listener to take offense.
    If find that really hard to understand. If every time I receive information that I don't like I feel negative emotions, isn't it up to me to find inner peace? It's not like the other person is specifically targeting me and trying to cause me mental harm.
    Why would I feel entitled to demand someone apologize for saying what they believe to be the truth? Do devout Hindus apologize in advance to the rest of the world? Do we apologize to some devout Christians to talk about the shape of the Earth, how beings adapt to the environment, or the value of ratio of circumference to diameter?
    What happens if we get into a situation were doing A offends group B and doing B offends group A?
    Where's the limit to who's worthy of apology? If I'm talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, do I apologize to supremacist groups for offending them by saying every person has equal dignity?

  • @Dr_Mel
    @Dr_Mel 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    You know me too well, I'm always yammering on about coalescing yods.

  • @fabricenicol4565
    @fabricenicol4565 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +13

    Published just 20 minutes ago and already 400 views+. There is still some hope on TH-cam.

    • @NicholasShanks
      @NicholasShanks 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +4

      40 minutes, 780 views.

  • @randzopyr1038
    @randzopyr1038 4 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Not only should we not use "Norse" mythology to approximate old English mythology, we shouldn't even use it to fully approximate Norse mythology on whole since the bulk of our knowledge comes from Iceland and we know that other Nordic countries may have had different lesser gods or even revered an unknown or god while not acknowledging the existence of other figures (i.e. Loki in Denmark).
    I just stumbled across you and absolutely love what you do.

  • @sheilam4964
    @sheilam4964 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Very interesting. Thx.

  • @cybergoth2002
    @cybergoth2002 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

    this video really coalesced my yods

  • @blueberry1874
    @blueberry1874 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    banger of a video

  • @Killahworm
    @Killahworm 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    Nynorsk or new-norwegian Ven means beautiful. So it might actually have followed that route

  • @hikingpete
    @hikingpete 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +21

    You mention a Jackson Crawford video about "why we should be careful of using classical mythology too much in interpreting Old Norse mythology". Could you provide a link? I'd like to follow up on that.

    • @LordJazzly
      @LordJazzly 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      I'd like that too; my guess is that the gap in time and culture is so large, and the contexts are so different, and the recording scribal tradition for the Old Norse mythologies was already aware of classical mythology, and classical mythology itself is such an extraordinary melting-pot of demonstrably different religious traditions - that trying to draw meaningful links between one and the other involves too many assumptions, interpretations, qualifications, and translations to get a good ratio between signal and noise in the comparison.

    • @hedgehog3180
      @hedgehog3180 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@LordJazzly Well it's also because all the texts about Norse mythology were written by Christian monks so they obviously aren't super trustworthy.

    • @waelisc
      @waelisc 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      a youtube search of "crawford tyr" will point you in the right direction. There are two or three of his to watch

    • @Sekhem
      @Sekhem 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

      The gap in time and culture is not so large. Avoiding parallelomania is one thing, but dismissing comparisons entirely is mostly a leftover from the culture wars (search for a national epic, national histories, and so on) of the late 19th century and early 20th century (Grundtvig, Árnason, Moe etc). Avoiding links altogether is a surefire way to produce nothing but noise.

    • @faithlesshound5621
      @faithlesshound5621 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +3

      The first outsiders to write down much about Norse culture would have been writing in Latin, and the temptation was always there to translate the Norse gods into the most similar member of the Roman or even Greek pantheon.
      It was common until recent times to translate foreigners' names, and in England, clerics writing church records or legal reports used to replace English Christian names (but not surnames) by their French or Latin equivalent. A labourer called Bill or Will might go down as "Guillaume" or "Gulielmus." William Shakespeare's baptismal record says "Gulielmus Shakspere." That does not mean that the priest actually said "Gulielmus."

  • @dayalasingh5853
    @dayalasingh5853 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    3:37 that's me. Most people around me yod drop though I've noticed that people of South Asian descent, even third generation like me yod drop less than others in Canada.

  • @starrmont4981
    @starrmont4981 13 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    Wodan is already associated with wood through the name of the Ash tree. Ash is a rune that means god, and Wodan's spear was carved from an Ash tree.

  • @ekmad
    @ekmad 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    What a fun video. I'm sure others have pointed out that Odin (the Norse cognate to Anglo-Saxon Woden) seemed to have a link with trees. Famously he was entangled and hung from one. I like the idea that, if you extrapolated it out, Wooden would be the God so people would describe things like a "treen stool" instead.

  • @dinojack9000
    @dinojack9000 20 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Love doing this with Old Norse words. Very fun to imagine these words existing in modern English.

  • @TheWizardOfOunce
    @TheWizardOfOunce 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +11

    Isn't the Old English "Wynn" related to wenhos? Wynn, meaning, joy, pleasure, etc.

    • @mesechabe
      @mesechabe 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

      Not to mention, “winsome.”

    • @TheWizardOfOunce
      @TheWizardOfOunce 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +5

      @@mesechabe the verb "win" or "to win" is also related to *wenh₁- through the proto germanic word "winnan" which means " to labor, strive, seek after something. In that sense, *wenh₁- relates to beautiful and something desireable. Winnan became the verb to seek something (implied to be desireable).

    • @YourCreepyUncle.
      @YourCreepyUncle. 25 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      And "wish".

  • @jaredlopez3512
    @jaredlopez3512 26 วันที่ผ่านมา

    thank you

  • @MossW268
    @MossW268 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Haha, I was thinking about this just the other day!

  • @AnnaAnna-uc2ff
    @AnnaAnna-uc2ff 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    Thanks.

  • @willx9352
    @willx9352 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    People are entitled to their beliefs and feelings, but this does not need to apologise to anyone when you are presenting facts.

  • @stancarmen3369
    @stancarmen3369 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    This reminds me of how the names of Norse gods changed in Swedish over the centuries. If I remember correctly, Freya became Fröa, and Sleipnir became Släppner, for example. But we seem to have reverted to the Icelandic versions at some point, and the old folk versions of the names sound really weird to me now ... Like, way too casual, and not as cool.

  • @Dryhten1801
    @Dryhten1801 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    STJ Collab when ^_^

  • @garyfrancis6193
    @garyfrancis6193 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    This has been my area of interest for over two decades teaching English and an exchange about the Name of God as YHWH or Giove with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1997. Lately I have been interested in Ancient Egyptian words that survive in modern languages. For some time I have thought that the correct pronunciation of the names of their gods was important to gain some insight into how they thought.

  • @badtimebandits
    @badtimebandits 22 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    We have two words for Zeus in Greek Ζεύς Zeus Δία Dia (means god in a lot of modern romance languages now)

  • @gabormuller9850
    @gabormuller9850 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    God has always been associated with the tree (wood, Yggdrasil), since creation emerges like from a hidden root and branches out into the multiplicity of creation.

  • @oldpigsqueal3578
    @oldpigsqueal3578 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    It's amusing, but not cognate in any way, that the projected modern English for beauty should be "wen". It's little used these days but is a word for a boil or great septic carbuncle - as in William Cobbett's description of London!

  • @BurnsAfterReading
    @BurnsAfterReading 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    Just realised we went to the same uni 🌹

  • @feanorofsunspear2320
    @feanorofsunspear2320 26 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I read paper about myths with Loki sometimes associating him with fire and afaik theres a proposal to derive the name from a word meaning flame.
    Also the etymology of Brahma is to ny knowledge more controversial than you put it, though the point you made about burrow gaining a religious meaning by association in this scenario was interesting. I would also be interested how a (animate) men- stem like that would have been reflectes in Germanix

  • @gwynedwards8526
    @gwynedwards8526 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +2

    My own name, Gwyn is the masculine form of "Wen" which means "beautiful" or "blessed" in Modern Welsh. Surely this must share a derivation with the Latin ['Wenus].

    • @caffetiel
      @caffetiel 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Doesn't appear to? (EDIT: the following is wrong) -'Gwen' looks like it derives from a PIE word meaning 'spirit'-

    • @gwynedwards8526
      @gwynedwards8526 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@caffetiel Maybe a FF then, do you know which PIE root?

    • @caffetiel
      @caffetiel 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      @@gwynedwards8526 wait no sorry I was bimbobrain and read it wrong: gwyn derives from PIE *weyd- (a root meaning "see", which became the word for white in Celtic languages), not the bit I was reading from. Gonna edit.

    • @gwynedwards8526
      @gwynedwards8526 26 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@caffetiel Ahh that makes more sense to me. Thanks for clarifying x

  • @OldWorldBible-st2rp
    @OldWorldBible-st2rp 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I just came across your channel. Do you have any videos related to Anatoly Fomenko's Chronology works? I can't quite describe it, but I feel like if you haven't dug into his works yet, you may be able to shed an amazing amount of light on the Alternative History genre

    • @WashashoreProd
      @WashashoreProd 22 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Not much light to shed, honestly. Fomenko is a Russian nationalist loon.

  • @johnnyroyal6404
    @johnnyroyal6404 27 วันที่ผ่านมา

    really injowed this shorter video

  • @aquenwisey
    @aquenwisey 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    I had always dreamed of reviving proto Indo-European words that didn’t make it into some of the daughter languages. I love it when a PIE words makes it into most later branches like the word for “I” such as I (*éǵh₂ in PIE, ego in Latin, ego in Ancient Greek, Ik in proto Germanic, aham in Sanskrit) but I totally hate it when this doesn’t happen and since I’m no expert, I can’t really reconstruct lost words by myself

    • @aquenwisey
      @aquenwisey 24 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Another example is the word for Son which is present in Germanic languages , ancient Greek (υἱός), Baltic (lithuanian: sūnus), Slavic (Russian: сын-syn)
      All from PIE “*suHnús” (Hellenic though took the U-stem version “*suHyús”)
      BUT LATIN LACKS THIS WORD AND I HATE IT!! I want to know so bad what the italic version of the English word “son” is just like I know what the italic version of sun (sol) is, of night (noctis) is, of milk is (mulgeō), of heart (cordis) is, of horn (cornu), of hope (cupidus) is, of hundred (centum) is…

  • @splak_5624
    @splak_5624 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    ooooh 9:48 I didn't realize there were nasalized vowels (like ã) in proto-germanic. I speak portuguese and these nasal vowels do a lot of heavy lifting that pretty clearly differentiates portuguese/galician from its other latin cousins. super interesting.

  • @acchaladka
    @acchaladka 26 วันที่ผ่านมา

    More please on Loki Louck Luca. Connections to the modern name Lucca / Luka would be interesting rabbit Warren to go down.

  • @AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen
    @AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    👏🙂
    Very interesting

  • @SteinGauslaaStrindhaug
    @SteinGauslaaStrindhaug 27 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    Tiw/Týr must have been important enough to have a day named after them just after Sun's day (Sunday) and Moon's day (Monday), Tiw's/Týr's day (Tuesday) and only then comes Wodan/Odin's day (Wednesday), and Thor's day (Thursday) etc.

    • @ekmad
      @ekmad 26 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      Unfortunately that's the problem with relying on the existing Sagas that were written centuries after the Norse had converted to Christianity. In those stories Tyr is very minor yet, as you have rightly pointed out, he appears to be significant enough to include with Odin and Thor. So is this the case of something we are missing entirely about the Norse pantheon, or it's just a regionalisation where the Germanic Pagan Anglo-Saxons felt Tyr was more important than the Norse Pagan Icelandics did? Who knows.

    • @annominous826
      @annominous826 18 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

      @@ekmad Unfortunately, the English weekdays are a calque from the Latin deities. We can tell from that that Tyr was considered the Germanic equivalent of Mars by the followers of Germanic religions, but not how important he was. Consider also that the Romans got their dies Martis from the Greek, hemana Ares, but Ares was a fairly minor Greek deity (relatively - he was arguably #12) and Mars was a major Roman one.

  • @lunchtiem
    @lunchtiem 19 วันที่ผ่านมา

    really interesting

  • @Ozoal
    @Ozoal 25 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Isnt Loki related to protogermanic/thiudisko word lugô, meaning liar? As attested in modern word warlock.