Roses and Cellar Doors

English doesn't have any native feminizing suffixes: all the ones we typically use (-a, -ia, -ette/etta, -ine/ina) are borrowed from Lat...

Many cultures have generic placeholder names. In American English, we have "Tom, Dick, and Harry" (that is, 'any/all men')...

Changing a name as it moves from one language to another is often necessary. due to sounds and/or letters that may not exist in the new lang...

In Middle English, there was a feminine occupational suffix--ster. Although occupations that women could be known for were relatively few, ...

Unlike in modern times, in the medieval world, your name would change as you travelled from place to place. So, if your name was John , you ...

Because I'm tired of seeing this bit of misinformation on naming boards-- Edward  has NOT been jumping in popularity because of Twilight...

The Irish name Caitlín  has two forms in the US. The original import usually had its spelling changed to reflect pronunciation, and became  ...

The term nickname  came from the wrong division of the phrase an ekename . Eke  is an Old English suffix/word meaning "additional"...

Although English is technically a Germanic language, much of its vocabulary is an amalgam of words from many different sources. Words pertai...

Although the R sound is made mainly with the lips in standard American English, in most languages and even some English dialects, the R is p...

Almost all languages spoken today are related to at least one other, whether closely (like Spanish & Portuguese) or distantly (like Engl...

Rhyming slang is an almost exclusively British phenomenon, specifically London, and is known worldwide as "Cockney rhyming slang"....

Although English is a Germanic language, it's closest sister language is Scots. It split from English 400-600 years ago, but is still mo...

Old English had a separate letter for the 'th' sound, called thorn . It looked like a modern capital 'Y'. So on an 'old...