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Conlangery Shorts 34: Musings on Etymology

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George uses some research into the etymology of coronavirus to launch into a way to build a story around the etymology of a word.

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Original Script

Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages, and the people who create them, I’m George Corley. I’m doing a short today where I’ll discuss etymology, where words come from.   

Before we get to that, Conlangery is entirely supported by our patrons on Patreon. I know that there’s a lot of uncertainty right now, but if you like Conlangery, and you’re able to throw a buck at us, patreon.com/conlangery is where you can do that.

In the last episode of Conlangery, I repeated a commonly stated etymology of coronavirus, stating that it was named for its “crown-like spikes”. Recently, while working on some English teaching videos with my wife, I found out that that etymology may be a folk etymology, or at least an incomplete story. Now, I usually don’t make a whole short trying to debunk something I said on the show, but as I worked out the issue, I thought I could use it to talk a little bit about how to do etymology in a conlang.

I got here when I was checking the Wikipedia article for coronavirus just to get some public-domain images for the video. I noticed their etymology didn’t match the one that I had heard on the news and repeated on the show. It instead said that coronaviruses resemble a “solar corona”. The same etymology is listed on Wiktionary. It was interesting to me that this etymology seems to be knowable enough to be on the dang Wikipedia page, but somehow news organizations are saying something else

For this solar corona etymology, Wikipedia cites a 1968 note in Nature about coronaviruses citing the original team that coined the term:

[T]here is also a characteristic “fringe” of projections 200 Å [ångströms] long, which are rounded or petal shaped … This appearance, recalling the solar corona, is shared by mouse hepatitis virus and several viruses recently recovered from man…

I also found among the sources a 2002 book co-written by David Tyrrell, one of the authors cited in the Nature source. That described the naming of the virus this way:

We looked more closely at the appearance of the new viruses and noticed that they had a kind of halo surrounding them. Recourse to a dictionary produced the Latin equivalent, corona, and so the name coronavirus was born.

Those sources seem pretty authoritative, since they both trace to members of the team that coined the term. I’m not uncovering anything new, here, either. This origin was known, it’s just that a lot of news sources seem to have repeated a different story. The projections that are discussed here are the spike proteins, which on an electron micrograph do form a ring-like structure around the virus. I’m not sure which story is better or if perhaps a combination of different metaphors all collided in corona, but it does seem like “crown-like spikes” was at best a game of telephone with one of the possible inspirations.

Now, this is a show about conlanging, and I’ve often said it’s not as important whether something is true as that it’s useful for your art. In this case, getting closer to the true story tells us something about how we should incorporate the story of a word into its etymology.

The key thing to notice here is exactly what the scientists who named the virus were looking at and what they knew about it. On the news, we often see color 3D renderings of a coronavirus. Those are illustrations made to show the virus structure and colorized to highlight important parts of the virus. When the virus was named in the 1960s, those scientists were looking at electron micrographs, images taken with an electron microscope. There was no color, and the images are two-dimensional. I’d suggest looking at the micrograph on the Wikipedia article for “Coronavirus” for a reference.

This goes back to something that we talked about on the disease naming episode: That you need to know where and when your speakers encountered a concept and what they understood about it. Let’s break down what we know about the story of coronavirus:

  1. This virus was encountered and named in a time when electron microscope technology was available.
  2. The scientists were inclined to name the virus based on visual features on the electron micrograph (as opposed to diseases it caused, etc.)
  3. The naming was a semi-formal process, with known namers.

Depending on which of the stories you think is the best one, you can highlight a couple of more facts:

  • If you take the “solar corona” explanation, that indicates a certain understanding of astronomy, even though it wasn’t their field.
  • If you take the “halo” explanation, we’re seeing the convention of using Latin for scientific terminology and also an influence from religion.

These seem to be plausible for 1960s British scientists, given my understanding, but what do you know about your conworld? What technology do they have available? What things do they know about disease, nature, or the world?

Hearing this etymology and all of the history involved inspired me to come up with an exercise to work out etymologies for words like this, where you want to tell a story about it. Ultimately, what I came up with might be a classic or a cliche, asking who, what, when, where, why, and how.

To be more specific, these are the questions I would ask:

  • Who is coining the word?
  • What does the word refer to?
  • When did speakers become aware of this concept?
  • Where does the concept come from?
  • Why is this concept important to have a word for?
  • How do these people usually coin words like this?

Let’s go over each of those a little more:

Who is coining the word?

In most cases, this is just going to be some anonymous speakers somewhere. That’s the answer for most natlang words, after all, but it’s useful to ask a bit about them. Could they be people in a particular region? A particular social class? A particular profession? In the example of “coronavirus”, the word was coined by scientists, which puts in mind a particular mindset and set of interests in coining the word that our other questions can address.

What does the word refer to?

This may seem obvious, but actually think about this for a bit. When coming up with words, I often actually do a little research on the actual object I’m naming. Part of what I’m looking for when I do that is information that speakers of my language would use when naming it. What does it look like? What can it be used for? Is there any technical knowledge of it your speakers could use in naming it? Getting in the heads of your speakers is important, here. You need to take a good look at the thing you are naming, then you can figure out what they see in it.

When did speakers become aware of this concept?

Did the speakers know about this concept thousands of years ago, or is it something they just recently encountered? This is crucial information, as it doesn’t just go to the age of the word, but also what technology or scientific knowledge would have been available, the cultural outlook, and what languages they would have been in contact with. Keep in mind that an old concept might be given a new word. If so, you’ll have to also think about when that new word came about and what influenced that.

Where does the concept come from?

Is it something from within the culture or imported from another one? Is this something that’s around and commonly known about, or something that’s rare and foreign? This interacts with the who question in interesting ways, as where the concept comes from might inform who is likely to first coin the word. Also consider where in the more metaphorical sense: part of the answer to this for coronavirus is that it came from an electron micrograph, because that’s the only way that scientists were able to see it.

Why is this concept important to have a word for? 

This is a tricky thing, and could lead you into some odd directions, but I think it’s fruitful. This is absolutely one where you need to be in your speakers’ heads. You need to know why they are naming these things. I’m reminded of Zeke Fordsmender’s work on date farming terms for his language — every word that he made had an underlying reason for being, because they were things Zeke found to be important in his research on date farming.

Using our example of coronavirus — why did we need a word for this concept? Coronaviruses are a class of viruses that are related to each other and cause diseases in humans and animals. There are a lot of reasons that they needed a name, but one that is clearly at play is that modern biology is just always seeking to classify, and when we see some viruses with similar features, we are of course going to look for a relationship. This feeds into a practical benefit that we know where to look if we find a new virus with the same features, as we should all understand now.

How do these people usually coin words like this?

If this is something that’s ancient and likely to be an old root, it’s probably not something to worry about, but otherwise: Are your conpeople into borrowing? Do they have extensive compounding strategies? Do they prefer derivational affixes? What kind of metaphors would they use?

This has to be informed by all of your other questions. It’s not just about coining words in general, but this particular word.Is this particular word going to be prestigious or vulgar? Is it a technical term? An artistic one? Or is it just an ordinary word coined on the street? Would your speakers borrow a word for a foreign concept, or insist on making their own native derivation?

To work through this, I thought that I would set about doing the etymology work for a word in a sketch I have recently worked up. I have created the basics of a language family for a story I’m writing. Right now I just have a couple of naming languages, under the working family name “Ankong” (which is absolutely going to have to change).

In the story — which may end up as a novel or a novella — I feature a cultural art that I have dubbed firedancing, where performers use a combination of magic and athletic skill to dance around in flames being manipulated with the wind. It’s common enough to be seen in street performances, though it may have had more prestige in the past. The magic used is not available to absolutely everyone, but is common enough that it’s just seen as a normal part of the world.

Let’s go through the questions and see how they can help us.

Who is coining the word?

This isn’t a word where there’s going to be one definitive coiner. I don’t know who invented firedancing, and I don’t think I will be answering that question. The word probably came from early firedancers themselves, so it would probably relate to how they promoted their performances to the public.

What does the word refer to?

As I described above, firedancing combines magic with an athletic dance to create a complete performance. To be more specific, the magic in this world allows people to manipulate heat and the motion of fluids. Traditional firedancing uses a bit of heat manipulation to start the fire in a dramatic fashion, and then manipulates the air around the fire in order to fan the flames or blow them into a variety of shapes. Both the fire and the dancing performers combine to create an idea of danger and excitement.

When did speakers become aware of this concept?

Firedancing is fairly old. This is important, as magic is systematically studied in this world, but the current theory behind it is relatively recent and wasn’t created in “Ankong”. This, combined with being coined by performers promoting their work to a general audience means the name probably won’t reference the schools of magic I’m calling “energetics” and “fluidics”. If any magical theory were to be invoked, it would be an older one. It was also known in a time when magic was less available than it is at the time of the story.

Where does the concept come from?

Although other cultures have similar practices, firedancing is old enough that Ankong people assume that they invented it. At this point, I don’t have any ideas of it coming from another culture. If it did, it’s sufficiently integrated into the culture that any foreign origin is forgotten. This is effectively a native art form.

Why is this concept important to have a word for?

Firedancing is popular entertainment. As I stated previously, it may have been more prestigious in the past, but in any case, the name should be something clear enough for people to know what they’re going to see and also should be enticing. This name was made for marketing.

How do these people usually coin words like this?

Ankong takes a lot of inspiration from Chinese (for some meta-story reasons), so compounding is the go-to strategy for word creation, and native terms are generally preferred, especially for something I’m assuming is a local art form.

So after answering our questions, we have some clarity on how we should proceed. We need a word that performers would use to describe dancing with flames with magical aid. It’s expected to be recognizable and clear enough to the public that it will put butts in seats, so to speak, but it also could be a bit poetic to gain some prestige. It should be a native compound word, and it can be relatively old.

Thinking about this, I see a number of options. My original English name fire dancing still works, but I want to adjust it. I considered something like fire jumping or fire leaping could work, if I imagine the dance to involve a lot of leaps (as it probably would) or just to borrow the jump – dance polysemy of Chinese. Poetic translations kind of depend on the nature of the dance and how it is performed and perceived. What role does the fire take? Is it a dance partner, an actor in a story, an obstacle, a backdrop?

Here is where my conlanging is feeding back into my worldbuilding. I need a little bit of backstory to set up how this kind of performance came about, so here it goes:

Animal taming used to be a popular form of entertainment for the elites of Ankong, sometimes making it into public performances for city residents. The exotic animals used for this were expensive and were typically owned by the imperial family or some higher ranking nobles and officials, so this was limited. Fire dancing evolved alongside this, and often imitated the moves of animal tamers, giving an impression that their fire was a wild animal to control.

A major historical fact about the world is that magic was at one time restricted much more to rich scholars who had time to study and hone their skills. Relatively recently, alongside the invention of printing, a method was developed of codifying spells into units that are easier to learn. This was invented outside of Ankong, but quickly spread there as a useful technology. It still takes practice and study to learn a spell, and spell books are somewhat expensive, but spells are much more common throughout society today than in the past.

The democratization of spells meant that firedancing became a cheaper alternative to beast taming performances that could more easily be taken out to the countryside. This, of course, also contributed to a reduction in prestige, even as animal taming became less popular itself.

So, with that story, the word I came up with is tʰũ˥p pʰwuu. Tʰũ˥p means “train or tame an animal”, and pʰwuu means “flame” or “fire”. So, it’s “fire taming”.

Something to note here is that I actually left plenty of ambiguity in my answers to my questions. I didn’t name a single inventor. I don’t really know the ultimate origins of firedancing, or perhaps I should say fire taming. That’s okay. You only need as much detail as you feel is necessary to make the history real. Perhaps there are several individuals the name is attributed to, or maybe nobody cares. Either way, I have a word with a story behind it, rather than just a simple origin.

I don’t know if this backstory will ever be a part of my story. It’s a bit incidental to it, given the role fire dancing plays in the narrative. Asking the questions did help me to focus and get the etymology and the story behind it right. I don’t believe this method is the end-all be-all, and I don’t expect people to use it with every word, but consider it something to try when you’re stuck on a word or as a technique to practice to get better at interesting etymologies. I’d love to hear from listeners about techniques they have for producing interesting etymologies as well. For now, I hope that this has been helpful for someone out there looking to do some etymology.

Thank you for listening, and happy conlanging.