Liechtenstein Place Names Explained

Having blogged samples of my books on English place names and also examined the etymologies of the nations of the world and their respective capitals I thought it time I cast my net a little wider. As English place names share some links to other tongues it would be interesting to see if any of the elements contributing to our place names could be found elsewhere. Continuing an alphabetical tour of the world and a look at Liechtenstein's place names. Here instead of cities we will look at the municipalities.

Liechtenstein gets its name from the family from Liechtenstein Castle in Austria, itself named because of its 'bright stone', which is exactly what the name means.

Ruggell is thought to be from the Latin for 'clearing the land', something which would have happened before settlement began.

Planken comes from the Latin and describes the region of 'rising meadows'.

Eschen is simply 'the place of the ash trees'.

Note the spellings of the places are English as the piece is written in English.

Trees

Trees are comprised of wood, yet a wood is made up of trees. A linguistic quirk? No. If we go back far enough we find Proto-Germanic widu and Proto-Indo-European widhu, each used to refer to the both the 'timber' and also 'tree'. Hence the anomaly is the word 'tree', itself odly derived from the root (no pun intended) drew-o meaning 'be firm, solid' and for obvious reasons.

But what about the different names given to various kinds of trees? Where do these originate?

Oak - a name which is Germanic but that is where the trail ends and the etymology is a mystery. However the Indo-European root of deru, which is also the Greek and Celtic word for 'oak', is also the source of the English word 'tree'. And if that isn't confusing enough, when the Vikings arrived in Iceland and brought with them the Norse word eik or 'oak', they discovered no oaks whatsoever and thus used eik to mean simply 'tree'.

Broom - the tree gets its name from the Proto-Germanic braemaz 'thorny bush' and derived from Proto-Indo-European bherem 'to project, a point'. Such lumps and points characterise the broom tree, this also making them most suitable for being tied together to produce what we would call a besom but which is effectively still a broom for sweeping.

Elm - quite easy to trace this back to Proto-Indo-European el meaning 'red, brown'. It is also the origin of the word 'elk' and 'eland'.

Yew - a similar origin to that of the elm (see above), where Proto-Indo-European ei-wo also suggests 'reddish'.

Maple - a name of surprisingly recent origins, indeed it seems to have simply appeared in Germanic languages around 1,500 years ago. It is highly improbable to think all Germanci languages suddenly began using the name, hence there must be a common origin but that root is unknown.

Lime - or linden tree is derived from Proto-Indo-European lent-o meaning 'flexible', this a reference to the trees pliant bast, this the inner fibrous bark.

Beech - all forms across the Proto-Indo-European languages, these all from Proto-Indo-European bhago and all simply refer to the tree. The same word is also the source of the word 'book' and thus the smooth bark of the tree would be seen as being a black metaphorical page on which to make marks to send messages.

Pine - ultimately from Proto-Indo-European pi-nu and derived from peie 'be fat, to swell' and liely referring to the sap or resin pouring from the tree when it is damaged.

Alder - has exactly the same origins as the elm (see above) and simply means 'red, brown'.

Ash - a Germanic term and, while the origin is far from certain, seems to come from it being the preferred wood used in the making of spear shafts. Old English aesc plega may have been used to mean 'war' but it literally translates as 'spear play'.

Holly - easy to see why the Proto-Indo-European root here is kel meaning 'to prick'.

Willow - ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wel meaning 'to turn, revolve' and a reference to the young willow's usefulness as it is whippy and flexible.

Larch - thought to be a loanword from an Alpine Gaulish langauge which could be related to Old Celtic darik meaning 'oak' which may add to the information known for 'oak' (see above) to suggest the word 'oak' simply meant 'tree'.

Lost Letters of the English Alphabet

I spend a lot of time reading old documents. As anyone who has done such will tell you, this is not something which comes easily. Not only is the handwriting often abysmal but these also contain letters we have long since abandoned. This turned my thoughts to wondering where these letters originated and why they fell by the wayside leaving just the 26 letters of the alphabet taught from our very first day in school (and often before).

Our modern alphabet uses the symbols, for that what letters really are, used in Latin. Yet the English language came from the Germanic group, Old English brought here by the Saxons after the Roman Empire abandoned our islands. This early tongue used a runic alphabet, as did the closely related Old Scandinavian who knew the variants as futhark, with the latter name coming from the first six letters of their alphabet.

I have attempted to put these in alphabetical order, using the modern equivalents as a guide. However this proved difficult with several as there are no comparable equivalents, hence this is an approximation of alphabetical order.

Ash is probably familiar to many, it is still pronounced as 'eye'.

Tironian ond is named after the Roman Tiro who invented a shorthand system where 'ond' represented 'and'.

Yogh hardly has a modern equivalent, although perhaps the best way to hear it is in the 'ch' pronunciation as in the name of composer Bach.

Insular G may not be the catchiest of names for a letter, hence perhaps the reason it is sometimes called 'Irish G', it was used as well as yogh until eventually replaced by same.

Eng was invented in 1619 by scribe Alexander Gill and intended to replace the 'ng' at the end of words.

Ethel was a letter, one which should be seen as the 'oe' equal of ash.

Long s will be familiar to us all as the 's' in the middle of words, rarely found at the beginning or end of words. In truth it is not strictly a different letter but simply a different way of writing 's'.

Thorn was replaced by the sound 'th' and pronounced exactly the same. It fell out of use due to its similarity to the 'y'. It is the harder pronunciation of 'th', as in 'this', 'that', 'the' and 'other'.

That is not a word here but a letter. Once used much less than thorn it outlived same and can still be found in churches and religious texts.

Eth is the softer pronunciation of 'th', such as in 'thick' and 'thin'. It fell out of use quite early, replaced by thorn.

Wynn was the equalivalent of the modern 'w'. The 'w' is an odd letter because the way we say the letter is actually wrong - it should be 'double v' and not 'double u'. Even stranger the Latin, from where we get the letter, did not have a 'u' but a 'v', albeit the latter being used as the vowel.

Ampersand is still in use, indeed text messaging has increased its popularity to a point where it is undoubtedly used more often and by more people than ever before. While today we use it as an abbreviation, it was once considered a letter in its own right and even placed at position 27 in the alphabet as recently as the 19th century.

It does strike me that many of these letters would come in extremely useful if they were included in the piles of letters dished out by Rachel Riley on Coundown. It might have helped the chap on the right to win more games.