Re: Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya (off-topic)
You are obviously right about borrowings in general, but a few words having similar sound *and* meaning is expected in any two languages. The class of words where this happens commonly are onomatopoeic or similar imitational (e.g. babies first sounds) ones. In addition, given that our pattern finding brains lumps together as similar rather large semantic and phonetic regions, not a single match by chance is actually rather *unlikely*. A highly contested theory also proposes a core of a handful of words whose pronunciation may be similar due to shared almost infinitely deep ancestry: and really ancient borrowings may not be so easily distinguishable either.Sorry to be a pedant: when it comes to names, people's creative efforts are, as you indicated, far simpler explanations than comparative linguistic ruminations. But, you did say *any* word, so I took a chance to digress.
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Messages

Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya  ·  D Bingham  ·  10/10/2007, 12:58 AM
Re: Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya  ·  Anneza  ·  10/10/2007, 11:23 PM
Re: Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya (off-topic)  ·  তন্ময় ভট  ·  10/11/2007, 6:50 AM
Re: Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya (off-topic)  ·  Anneza  ·  10/11/2007, 11:24 PM
Re: Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya  ·  তন্ময় ভট  ·  10/10/2007, 7:17 AM