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Help[Facts] Re: Names with unknown or uncertain etymologies
in reply to a message by M.Selenika
It’s usually due to lack of sources. Unless someone actually wrote down where they got a name, and that piece of writing survived, there’s rarely any evidence of how an obscure name was invented.
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/christine-seaforth-finch
http://christineseaforthfinch.blogspot.com/
http://christineseaforthfinch.blogspot.com/
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This applies to older names as well. Names often preserve vocabulary elements that became archaic before they were recorded in prosaic/poetic writing, and in many cases traces of extinct languages that may have not survived to be recorded in anything other than a few personal and topographical names that remained in use once the language was replaced by another. If the topographical uses are widespread we can tease out a probably meaning, but that does not work with personal names. Unlike topographical names personal names can also cross cultures so an otherwise poorly attested language can survive in personal names in regions they were never spoken.
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Thank you for the information.
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