View Message

Just because two words are close in sound does not mean that they are etymologically similar. You are confusing similarity in phonology, the sound of words, with similarity in etymology, the history of a word. There are many words in different languages which are superficially similar in sound completely by accident, and the words have different histories.

---

The French word for cinnamon is cannelle. That word is probably etymologically related to the Spanish word canela. But cannelle and Chanel don't have to be related any more than English word pairs like cake/shake, cot/shot, or cunning/shunning have to be go back to the same ancient words.