Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 September 20

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September 20

"it is unusual for a toponym to be shorter than its source"

Indeed it is. Any examples? Let's leave aside the question of first names, e.g. those places named along the lines of Mount Smith (10 characters), named after Alexander Smith (14). Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:18, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• Are you including demonyms? For words like Mancunian for resident of Manchester, which is shorter by one letter? Or for features named after persons only? And what are you counting as a name? New York is named in honor of James, The Duke of York, does that count as "shorter"? The city of Baltimore is named in honor of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, which is still shorter even if we only count his name as "Cecil Calvert". It's unclear what restrictions you wish to place on the situation.--Jayron32 17:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Rome, from Romulus, though he may have been invented afterwards. - Lindert (talk) 17:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Most likely Romulus was a backformation given that it isn't even the only foundation myth of Rome, and the other major myth doesn't even involve Romulus and Remus, that being the Aeneid. --Jayron32 17:27, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

It's not too clear from our "Aeneid" article, but while Aeneas was claimed as an ancestor of the Romans, he founded Lavinium, not Rome. (His son founded Alba Longa.) AnonMoos (talk) 18:11, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Romulus and Remus are a reworking of the PIE myth of the Divine twins, with Romulus being a distortion of geminus, "twin". (See, e.g., Tiberius Gemellus.) The etymology of the city's name is usually attributed either to an obscure Etruscan source or to the PIE root "flow" which shows up in stream and rheum. μηδείς (talk) 21:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

The question is asking to leave aside places named after people, so I assume we are looking for things like Scot from Scotland or Irish from Ireland or Briton from Britain or Breton from Brittany...maybe this isn't so unusual... Adam Bishop (talk) 17:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

We weren't asked to "leave aside places named after people", we were asked to leave aside the case where the toponym is shorter because it omits the person's first name. If Christopher Columbus was the man's actual name instead of an anglicization, Colón (any one of them) would qualify because it's shorter than "Columbus". (Then again, maybe it still qualifies, as it's also shorter than his actual name "Colombo". It depends on how you feel about forms of the name in different languages.)

I have one good one, though: Pakistan means "land of the pure" but also incorporates an acronym formed from several place names.

Another category is places like Milan, London, and York where the name has been shortened over the centuries from an earlier form (in those three cases, the original name was in Latin). I don't think these should be counted either.

In The Story of Language (2nd edition, 1965), Mario Pei claims that Baltimore, Ohio, merged with adjacent Basil, Ohio, to form a town named Baseball. However, as you see from the links, Wikipedia disagrees, and so does the Geographic Names Information System, though apparently Basil was a name for Baltimore or part of it. So that one is bogus. But maybe there have been actual mergers of places where the new name was formed from parts of the old ones? --69.159.60.147 (talk) 19:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Columbus is the Latin version of a name that would be Colón in Spanish and Colombo in (standard) Italian. People in former centuries were much less reluctant to do such translations than is often the case today... AnonMoos (talk) 20:44, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Indeed; and another example like this would be Tolyatti in Russia, named after Palmiro Togliatti --82.69.159.206 (talk) 07:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Scotland is named after the Scots (who according to legend are named after an Egyptian princess). Iapetus (talk) 09:04, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

• The impetus for this discussion is the question above about the origin of the name of the Georgian town of Nekresi. μηδείς (talk) 20:56, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

How about my home town of Even Yehuda, named after E. Ben-Yehuda? --82.69.159.206 (talk) 07:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

What does shortness refer to? What about languages that do not use the Latin script? --92.75.104.125 (talk) 16:31, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

It is frequent in China, like Lüda (now again Dalian) got its name after merging two cities Lüshun and Dalian, or the province Liaonin (辽宁) got its name from the phrase 辽河两岸永远安宁. In Russia there are placenames like Dzerzhinsk from the surname Dzershinsky, or Chistopol from chistoye pole (clear field), etc. Also consider names like Los Angeles or Buenos Aires. Шурбур (talk) 18:06, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

wrought usage in a sentence

How is this supposed to be used? Does it mean exactly like worked, or are there some differences?

• I worked on my homework last night. It was hard.
• I wrought on my homework last night. It was hard.
• Cloudy-puff wrought all day on the land, for it was sowing season.
• Cloudy-puff worked all day on the land, for it was sowing season.
• This iron is wrought by the local blacksmith. That's why it is called wrought iron.
• This iron is worked by the local blacksmith. That's why it is called worked (pronounced wrought) iron. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:27, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• Wrought is the past tense of wreak. Wreak and work come from the same root in Germanic, but wreak is archaic, and is pretty much only used in the term "to wreak havoc". Maria wrought havoc on Puerto Rico would be a valid modern usage. You could say "the damage wrought by Maria was catastrophic" if you wanted. Wrought iron does mean "worked iron" but in that case it is interpreted as a specialized adjective. Don't use wreak or wrought in normal speech or writing, except for those two set phrases, "wrought iron" and "wreak/wrought havoc", otherwise you are liable to be misunderstood, make a mistake, and sound odd, to say the least. Worked is never pronounced wrought. μηδείς (talk) 23:00, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

As the Wiktionary page you cited says:

It has become common to use wrought, the original past tense and participle for work, as the past tense and past participle for wreak, as in wrought havoc (i.e. worked havoc for wreaked havoc), due both to the fact that the weak form worked has edged out wrought from its former role almost entirely (except as an adjective referring usually to hand-worked metal goods), and via confusion from the wr- beginning both wreak and wrought, and probably by analogy with seek.

It's therefore misleading (if not just plain wrong) to say that "wrought is the past tense of wreak". Many people, including me, use wreaked as the past-tense form of wreak and in most cases use weak worked as the past-tense form of work, though wrought survives in certain specialized or archaic uses. I'd say that of the OP's examples 1 & 4 are idiomatic in modern English; 2 & 3 are proper but unacceptably archaic; 5 is justified because in this case the obsolete past wrought explains the usage in the term wrought iron; and 6 is incorrect. Deor (talk) 23:17, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh, Deer, that's just crazy talk. Of course wrought is the past tense of wreak. What are you suggesting, that wrought is the past tense of burp? The fact that some people innovate and use solecisms like *wreaked has nothing to do with anything the OP asked. Should he go buy some wreaked iron railings for his front steps? People say all sorts of stuff, like the ship sunk, when they should be saying the ship sank. Let the OP know that you are using substandard modern innovations if you want to play this game. I gave him the proper, historical, educated answer. μηδείς (talk) 00:18, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Every dictionary I own says the proper, historical and educated answer is that "wrought" is the archaic past and past participle of "work". It arose in the 1200s as wroght, a metathetic variant of worht, past participle of worchen ("to work"). Using "wrought" as the past tense of "wreak" is the recently-developed mis-usage innovation. The past tense of "wreak" has always been "wreaked".--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 05:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Wrought iron in contemporary usage is iron that has been worked into an artistic or decorative shape. Examples are twisted or spiralled battens that support a bannister on a staircase, fancy twisted spirals that hold up a letterbox or form part of the frame of an ornate gate or fence. "Wrought iron" is not usually used as a description for plain metalwork such as brackets and beams, even though these may require a large amount of processing to form them. Akld guy (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Wrought and wreak are not particularly related.[1][2] Wreak is more connected with wreck and wrack. However, wright is related to wrought.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:22, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

• As I said, work and wreak are distantly related forms of a root that goes back to PIE and the various forms derived from them have become confused over the years, reanalyzed, and so forth: From Middle English wreken, from Old English wrecan, from Proto-Germanic *wrekaną, from root *wrek-, from Proto-Indo-European *wreg- (“work, do”). The nitpicking is to be expected, these are the point-scoring cavill pages after all. But the answer I gave the OP stands, don't use wreak unless you mean damage and wrought is the proper fixed-use adjective for black iron worked by a blacksmith. But to use wreak to mean work generically is wrong in modern usage. Wrought should only be used in modern usage where iron or the past of to wreak damage is concerned. μηδείς (talk) 05:55, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

But your advice "don't use wreak ..." and statement that "to use wreak to mean work generically is wrong in modern usage" have nothing to do with the question asked by the OP, who was concerned with the usage of worked and wrought as past-tense forms of work. No one but you thinks that wreak has anything to do with the matter. Deor (talk) 09:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

And we now have another example of WP:RD participants getting all worked up and overwrought about a post. <shamelessly using WP:RL/D as a linguistics MOOC since 2006> There's a term, yeah, for when consonants play musical chairs around their vowels in cognates - as in work and wrought - something like "anaphylaxis" or somesuch </shamelessness>? --Shirt58 (talk) 11:41, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Metathesis (linguistics) -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

謝謝, AnonMoos --Shirt58 (talk) 10:08, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Chambers' Dictionary says that the past tense of "wreak" is "wreaked", formerly "wroke". 92.19.170.106 (talk) 10:41, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Not only are you swole, you're woke, man. μηδείς (talk) 02:05, 23 September 2017 (UTC)