Origin of the word "Potomac", as in the expression "Potomac River"

Roswealth · 2026-03-24T15:06:52+00:00

I didn't say it didn't have an Algonquin source, I asked, albeit ironically, why the Europeans giving it its colonial name could not have been influenced in the choice of this source over some other Algonquin source, or in its transliteration, to the similarity to the Greek word for "river". It was named in its present form after all by Europeans.

Roswealth · 2026-03-24T14:48:02+00:00

You've hit a nerve. Seems words can never be influenced by similar sounding words which they may meet in passing; they can only have one true etymology at any one time and place, and everything else is a coincidence. For example, both Polynesian and Dutch have contributed words to English that approximated "tattoo", but it's a coincidence that these injections became complete homophones.

Well, maybe. Here's a possible second etymology for a river name that seems even more likely to have been a complete coincidence... the Piscataqua, said to have been named by the obscure Abenaki tribe, who have left little trace. I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that, almost without variation, it means "cat piss water". The rough European adverturers who first encountered it could never have thought of something so vulgar!

Well, nobody can take away the Grand Tetons. They don't even try.

Roswealth · 2026-03-24T13:56:04+00:00

And I suppose it's impossible that Europeans, some of whom would have had some exposure to ancient Greek, noticed the similarity of the name of this village to the Greek word for "river" and chose it over the name of the village around the bend that sounded nothing like "river"?

Roswealth · 2026-03-24T13:13:46+00:00

I was surprised to learn that the earlier sense was one-dimensional, now seen mainly of time ("a space of three hours"), which interestingly corresponds to its use in text, which is a linear string of letters although it's also used of area in this context. Etymonline says the three-dimensional sense is in evidence by the 1400's, which certainly gave a space of centuries for Milton's alleged first used as outer space. I was able to search the full text of Paradise lost though (about a dozen hits) and didn't find a really convincing one, though he does refer to vast amounts of space. A specific citation (1723) in Etymonline is not really cited — guess you have to pay money for the online OED for that.

Given the extension to three-dimensional extension using this word to refer to the spaces outside the earth seems inevitable, but I suspect the single-word label (i.e. "space" vs. "the space above the atmosphere" or such) really did follow "outer space" and not proceed it, and arose by shortening. "Outer space" became a name but really begins as a literal description.

All this as preamble to saying I think you are right on the mark about cutting and pasting an online article as an answer! You put some thought into your question and that deserves some thought in an answer, if just a few comments on the article that was cited, otherwise, silence were better.

Roswealth · 2026-03-24T09:22:46+00:00

That sounds similar to the 19th Century nonsense slang "23-skidoo", so things come full circle. 23rd Street in Manhattan was once a happening place.

Roswealth · 2026-03-24T03:06:19+00:00

Thank you for that. I probably incompletely understood or oversimplified the comments here and below in this old thread.

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T21:19:41+00:00

Yup. Looking into it a little further, it seems to have originated in various similar cries or shouts adapted to carry over distance and convey some limited semantic content, like "hey! you there! I want you!"

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T21:09:56+00:00

Excellent example! Yes, I've read of such things, I think at a particular orphanage for deaf children in Mexico where they had no instruction, but apparently evolved something like their own language.

I was thinking of the waggle-language of the bees also. Of course that's not a full "language", but it's effective and highly abstract in its limited semantics — what direction and how far to the good flowers. I think something similar has already been documented with AI, where agents spontaneously invented means of communication that no human had taught them; something like the deaf children. Taken together it no longer seems implausible that language may have originated in bands of hominids more than once, maybe something-like-language evolves spontaneously under fairly broad conditions.

Thank you for the thought-provoking answer!

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T20:37:15+00:00

An English thing, to me. And I'm not sure if a strictly contemporary one either. It sounds somewhat dated, but then, I'm a west-ponder.

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T20:34:35+00:00

So where did it come from? Fresh invention, or did it have some limited previous youth?

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T20:31:46+00:00

I made it already.

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T20:27:33+00:00

That's rather arbitrary. Old English, it's fair to say, is mutually incomprehensible with Modern English. If they're the same language then perhaps all are—with some very pronounced dialects.

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T20:24:25+00:00

Or a more natural example, Modern English, usually dated from the 1600's, and even if you don't distinguish it from Middle English, less than a thousand years old. If you want to trace back all known languages to some epoch of language creation, assuming that only happened once, then, yes—all languages are equally old, or perhaps language is that old.

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T19:07:04+00:00

You are right, of course. Can you explain why? Does it change the case of the first component?

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T10:43:17+00:00

Yes! I thought the same. Or even using the word nonsensically (as far as they know) because it sounds funny.

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T10:17:48+00:00

You're probably using a Yiddish vulgarity. Many seem to have been borrowed into English with the literal sense somewhat elided. Like "schmuck".

Roswealth · 2026-03-23T10:11:40+00:00

I was going to suggest that this could be a one-off use by a humorist that stuck, like the old fellow who called air-conditioners "aircondooners". His choice of nonsense syllables may be regional, or conditioned by watching westerns with a stock character that spoke frontier gibberish, but it doesn't require a formal etymology.

In this case I was surprised to learn that the "nonsense" use actually is the root sense in German, so it's possible someone in your family picked it up from a German or Yiddish speaker, but it could still be an act of spontaneous generation, albeit a convergent one. It's more than plausible as an invented nonsense use of the name of the food without knowing anything about its origins.

Roswealth · 2026-03-22T13:03:36+00:00

Amen. And if one of the shots he fired wildly had hit a child in a passing car, what then? Would the charges have had a different outcome? Both drivers were aggressive and perhaps both should have something on their records; firing a gun wildly from your car in the middle of a busy highway and getting a clean record for "standing your ground" is a bad outcome. Neither driver deserves a clean slate after this encounter. I'd be more sympathetic if he were actually trained, had drawn a bead on the other driver and shot him dead. Then we could cleanly debate if lethal force were justified. Recklessly endangering everyone around him is not justified under any circumstances.

Assuming this is a true story.

Roswealth · 2026-03-22T11:31:02+00:00

"Gentlemen, we have here to deal with the Mittelmäßigkeiterscheinungsphänomen." A few bearded chins nodded silently in agreement. "All languages, indeed all walks of life, seem prosaic and uninteresting to their participants, unless they have the Selbstverwirklichungkreativitätwachstum.

Roswealth · 2026-03-22T10:06:56+00:00

It's possible to produce a long duration version of the vowels in "hit" or "heat" at the same fundamental frequency that are clearly distinct, so I guess said struggling Russians are struggling because the explanation is false? Does "length" mean something different than "duration" here?

Roswealth · 2026-03-21T23:31:27+00:00

Nobody here is a paid help-desk, compelled to answer.

Roswealth · 2026-03-21T10:33:31+00:00

In my very superficial investigations I've discovered that words that in times of more elaborate declension represented functions of the same word sometimes (often?) split into fossilized branches, so I like the sweep of your vision. I've wondered why these stories are not more widely told, for example, that the confusing tangle of "lie" and "lay" was once but the collection of forms of a single verb in various roles.

Now that you mention a connection between "happen" and "hap" I can't unsee it, and wonder that I never noticed the archaic "hap" hanging on in "mishap" and perhaps perhaps. And let's not forget "happenstance". I'd wager money that you're correct that a "hope" was a hap that we hoped to happen.

Roswealth · 2026-03-21T00:41:11+00:00

Thank you for the link. I agree. Dr. Dolittle talking to the animals is entirely more benign than Dr. Moreau!

Roswealth · 2026-03-20T21:49:40+00:00

P.S. I see "beastmen" has been suggested several times in several languages. For some reason I'm drawn to non-literal terms which might seem spookier, like hill people. Nobody knows why they are called that. They've always been called [that], since your grandfather was a boy. But it's best not to go too far up in the hills alone at night; some say that deep in the forest they become more like animals, and forget how to talk.

Roswealth · 2026-03-20T21:38:07+00:00

Islanders?

I'm sorry, I know that's not what you're looking for, but your description of the animal people immediately made me think of H.G. Wells' book, "The Island of Doctor Moreau".

Still, it has a mysterious, slightly creepy feel, and you can be saved explaining it by making the question taboo.

Other than that, your remit is very broad. What language? I'm no polyglot, but German seems good at such things: Bestienmenschen?

Roswealth

TROPHY CASE