What if Old Names for Gods had Survived into English?

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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[@DavidCowie2022]

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

[@midtskogen]

And cognate with 'first' and 'prime'.

[@Ethan7_7]

My brain too

[@AutoReport1]

People confuse Frigg and Freyja all the time.

[@arionthedeer7372]

@@midtskogenwhat

[@rtlgrmpf]

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

[@Edward24081]

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

[@Theo-oh3jk]

Is it pronounced "woonsbruh" /'wʊnzbɹə/?

[@midtskogen]

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]

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

[@rikospostmodernlife]

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

[@kendyl8878]

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"

[@letMeSayThatInIrish]

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

[@AmyThePuddytat]

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

[@se6369]

Yep, also spelt væn

[@user-do5zk6jh1k]

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

[@ErikHolten]

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]

kjære vene!

[@chris_wick]

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]

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

[@real_nosferatu]

Grima Wormtongue

[@Vizivirag]

Every road does really lead back to Odin @OverlySarcasticProductions

[@LobertERee]

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.

[@elimalinsky7069]

Isn't the word "khristos" pertaining to the action of pouring oil? As in annointing kings with oil. As far as I know the word Christ is a translation of the Hebrew term Messiah, which means the annointed one. In the ancient Near East the ceremony of appointing a king included the pouring of olive oil over the head of the enthroned.

[@orodes_1]

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

[@irgendwer3610]

literally linguistic sandbox fun

[@eyellow6999]

I FINNA SCREAM YES FR

[@bartmannn6717]

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]

satisfying is the right word

[@kf7872]

Same!

[@Murglie]

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

[@mr.booboo1]

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

[@georgereevesjr8289]

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

[@haukzi]

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

[@adam.bolivar]

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]

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

[@gwest3644]

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]

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

[@adam.bolivar]

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

[@RandomNonsense1985]

Lūca lives on the second floor…

[@matthewcarter2500]

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

[@antonyreyn]

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

[@barnsleyman32]

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

[@gavinrolls1054]

​@@antonyreynyeah but that's the seemingly irregular i-umlauted form from Old English Wēden. Even then, it's also the genitive singular, Wēdnes. He's not wrong because he's using the regular more common and expected form Wōden

[@buurmeisje]

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

[@staffanlindstrom576]

In Swedish it is "fru".

[@buurmeisje]

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

[@staffanlindstrom576]

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

[@buurmeisje]

@@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]

@@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.

[@volpilh]

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.

[@gavinrolls1054]

could've done the Germanic deity/adjective *Burgundī but oh well

[@LyNguyen33739]

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.

[@aureltoniniimperatorecomun4029]

English is incredible conservative in the pronunciation of semivowel w

[@NewLightning1]

I think it's the only indo-european language to preserve this sound. With other IE [w] sound coming from sound shift (Like poland ł from /ł/ to [w]. which fun fact i think happened recently in 20th century) or coda/final of [u] (Like in French Ou as in Oui [Wi])

[@gavinrolls1054]

​@@NewLightning1its definitely not the only Indo-european language to preserve it. Elfdalian is another Germanic language which preserves it. I think some Indo-Iranian languages also have it.

[@jacobparry177]

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]

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]

@@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]

@@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]

@@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]

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

[@AutoReport1]

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

[@pattheplanter]

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

[@villeporttila5161]

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]

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

[@Azelf89]

Always got to be careful with these things though.

[@rezazazu]

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

[@EvincarOfAutumn]

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

[@ekmad]

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.

[@tylerdhoore624]

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!

[@AmyThePuddytat]

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]

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

[@gavinrolls1054]

bro wrote a whole essay for a point the video didn't make. yes I agree with you. but no, he admitted the form was from a different grade.

[@YDdraigGoch43]

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

[@ekmad]

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

[@NathanDudani]

​@@ekmadikr

[@kalacaptain4818]

venus is a planet

[@corrinflakes9659]

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

[@gammamaster1894]

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

[@SEDATEDSlothRecords6083]

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]

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]

@@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]

​@@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]

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

[@wiseSYW]

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

[@randzopyr1038]

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.

[@Ithirahad]

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

[@NicholasShanks]

You forgot Wen

[@user-qd8yy9lc4g]

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

[@digitalbrentable]

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]

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

[@ThW5]

@@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".

[@JonBrase]

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]

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

[@pixelfrenzy]

This is still a typical Scottish way of pronouncing it.

[@alicelund147]

Vän in relatively modern Swedish is Beautiful.

[@jefficah1295]

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

[@alicelund147]

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

[@elias.t]

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

[@proto_charlotte]

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

[@andeve3]

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_]

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

[@PGouges35]

I see Guinevere

[@andeve3]

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).

[@strongestmaninmurfreesboro]

Your vids have been slappin recently

[@16tonw8]

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

[@Queenfloofles]

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.

[@JohnWayne-bm1ty]

Really cool video as usually!

[@MazCat]

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

[@ethanpintar5454]

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.

[@fangsandfolklore8795]

Thank you for these excellent videos.

[@DellDuckfan313]

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]

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..

[@ksbrook1430]

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.

[@markhughes7927]

Awen/Aven - ‘aphprodite’ in Welsh!

[@tsgillespiejr]

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

[@IntelVoid]

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?).

[@orecula]

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!

[@EFO841]

I love these types of videos!

[@yes_head]

Very fun. Thanks, Simon.

[@MenelionFR]

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

[@vitamins-and-iron]

another really interesting vid. cheers

[@kf7872]

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'.

[@David_Palacios]

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.

[@glitteraapje7329]

wake up babe new simon roper just dropped!!

[@locutorest]

Thanks, simon!

[@NThomas-xj7bj]

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.

[@Aleblood]

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

[@nicholaslemosdecarvalho5328]

Awesome video!

[@patriciabristow-johnson5951]

This is fascinating!!!

[@frankharr9466]

That is, in fact, interesting. Thank you.

[@edwardlloyd9468]

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.

[@tristanholderness4223]

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]

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

[@tristanholderness4223]

@@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

[@gavinrolls1054]

well the thing is you don't need a verb to attach -a/*-ô to, it can be practically anything

[@tristanholderness4223]

​@@gavinrolls1054 of course, but the verb seemed the likely source, and we'd expect a-mutation regardless of the specifics, as there aren't other sources of ū that wouldn't have been lowered in this position

[@dbass4973]

great video thank you

[@LisandroLorea]

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?

[@karlpoppins]

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]

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

[@karlpoppins]

@@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]

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]

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

[@sweeterthananything]

@@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

[@cybergoth2002]

this video really coalesced my yods

[@Dr_Mel]

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

[@Bjorn_Algiz]

Interesting and informative to say the least 🤔

[@LimeyRedneck]

Another banger!! 🤠💜

[@fabricenicol4565]

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

[@NicholasShanks]

40 minutes, 780 views.

[@sheilam4964]

Very interesting. Thx.

[@ekmad]

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.

[@dayalasingh5853]

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.

[@hikingpete]

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]

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]

@@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]

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

[@Sekhem]

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]

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."

[@calvinrollins4957]

This is great!

[@dinojack9000]

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

[@garyfrancis6193]

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.

[@MossW268]

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

[@stancarmen3369]

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.

[@blueberry1874]

banger of a video

[@RoundHeadedMoron]

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

[@Killahworm]

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

[@badtimebandits]

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

[@acchaladka]

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

[@aquenwisey]

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]

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…

[@TravisSurtr]

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

[@mesechabe]

Not to mention, “winsome.”

[@TravisSurtr]

@@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.]

And "wish".

[@gavinrolls1054]

different ablaut form though

[@OldWorldBible-st2rp]

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]

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

[@AnnaAnna-uc2ff]

Thanks.

[@johnnyroyal6404]

really injowed this shorter video

[@feanorofsunspear2320]

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

[@feuille-verte]

Do you have a link to the video by Jackson Crawford mentioned at 4:15 ?

[@willx9352]

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

[@jamesmckean3221]

By Jove!

[@redoktopus3047]

is there a guide somewhere online of the sound changes from old english to modern english?

[@jsbrules]

Wikipedia has great stuff on this for example the article “history of English”, which has some nice tables, and also “Phonological history of English”

[@jaredlopez3512]

thank you

[@starrmont4981]

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.

[@gavinrolls1054]

no.. æsc is the name of a rune, and æsc is just the word ash. you're thinking of óss which is another rune name which means god.

[@AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen]

👏🙂 Very interesting

[@LiamsLyceum]

PIE *wénh₁-os may not have come into PGmc but *wenh₁-i-s did. It’s the OE wine meaning “friend”.

[@midtskogen]

What about Norse vænn, modern Norwegian ven, meaning beautiful?

[@wezzuh2482]

Yes! In Scandinavian languages the word for friend is "ven". Etymologically related to venus.

[@talontales]

Are you an archaeologist by profession? I also studied at Uclan and I'm considering going back for an archaeological degree.

[@lunchtiem]

really interesting

[@cadileigh9948]

many cultures use words describing the function of a deity rather that a name. That's because using the name is somewhat presumptious by a mere mortal . Wyneb = modern Cymraeg for face, Dydd Gwenner is Friday and Gwener the planet called Venus by English. The Gwen part meaning white / shades of Graves ! But i am interested in the number of Ann, Annu , Annis etc names for Goddesses Europe wide .

[@gabormuller9850]

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.

[@splak_5624]

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.

[@gavinrolls1054]

proto germanic had lots of nasal vowels. though funnily enough, ą is the only one that isn't phonemic haha

[@orthohawk1026]

Given Simon's theory on what the OE frowe would have become in ME, and the fact that OE "wer" (male person) pretty much stayed the same down to ME (at least in the compound 'werewolf") maybe we can appease the PC crowd somewhat and replace Mr. and Mrs/Miss with "Were" and "Frow" (pronounced "wear" and "fro") for those words?

[@eljestLiv]

When you talk about a “sound change algorithm”, is there such a thing publically available, or was it just a figure of speech?

[@gavinrolls1054]

it was kind of a joke but it is based on fact. see his other videos on sound changes or see something like the book "From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic"