Talk:Nassau, Rhineland-Palatinate

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Kelisi in topic Etymology

Requested move

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Considering this is the original Nassau that has spawned all the other countless Nassau's in the world (see Nassau (disambiguation) for a complete list), propose to move this. Towns in Germany are also not listed with the country at the end either. Gryffindor 16:32, 22 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Cheers :-) Gryffindor 23:19, 23 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Request not fulfilled due to lack of consensus. Rob Church Talk 19:09, 4 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Etymology

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I have removed all references to the name's alleged etymology, as they are unsourced. Knowing as I do that it seems likely that the town's name is inspired by the German words nasse Aue ("wet floodplain"), I nonetheless reject any statement made as though fact to the effect that this is what the town's name means, the reason being that a name's modern form can be misleading as the result of sound shifts, semantic shifts, folk etymology, corruption of the pronunciation down the centuries, and, I'm sure, other things, too. Even the de:WP article does not explain the name's origin. If you know German and think that the etymology is "obvious", I would direct your attention to such German placenames as Katzenelnbogen ("obviously" means "cat's elbow", but that's not its etymology), Feuchtwangen ("obviously" means "moist cheeks", but that's not its etymology) or indeed Darmstadt ("obviously" means "gut town", but that's not its etymology). You cannot simply assume what is "obvious". Kelisi (talk) 20:38, 27 August 2020 (UTC)Reply