The other day I had one of these moments when something dawns on you and you feel incredibly stupid.
Near my university campus there is a street called Earl Street, which I sometimes walk down on my way home. This time, when I was turning on it, I happened to look at the sign and wonder how the word "earl" could be mispronounced (which probably tells a lot about me
). After fiddling with potential pronunciations for a bit, I realized it is probably related to the word Eorl! Voila:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Online Etymology Dictionary
Earl: Old English eorl "brave man, warrior, leader, chief" (contrasted with ceorl "churl"), from Proto-Germanic *erlaz, which is of uncertain origin. In Anglo-Saxon poetry, "a warrior, a brave man;" in later Old English, "nobleman," especially a Danish under-king (equivalent of cognate Old Norse jarl), then one of the viceroys under the Danish dynasty in England. After 1066 adopted as the equivalent of Latin comes (see count (n.))
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I recall reading somewhere on the Downs about Ceorl's name's origin, but I can't believe I was that slow about
eorl. Admittedly, first time I read about Eorl the Young was when I couldn't string a full sentence in proper English, and I guess the two words never overlapped in my mind. But still, it took me way longer than is probably needed to figure this out!
Going on to see the full entry for ceorl, I discovered that it might also be related to the Russian word for
king (
korol'), but apparently there is much debate about that among the philologists of google.ru. They don't believe that Charles the Great deserves that much credit for spreading the sound combination all over Europe.
Another similar discovery I made a while back is that the Thains are really thanes. All my life I mispronounced "Thain", saying it like it's two syllables. And at this point I really don't have an excuse, because I was familiar with the word
thane before I read LOTR in English.