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AwesomeInPerson t1_ja2ncwq wrote

Reply to comment by blakerabbit in TIL Tolkien assisted on the Oxford Dictionary's first edition, focused on 'W' words waggle to warlock. He "learned more in those two years than in any other"; and certain etymologies continued to puzzle him for years, with many pages of notes written later on 'walrus' for a lecture at Leeds by PianoCharged

Yep, in German it's Walross which literally means whale horse.

(Wal is whale and Ross is horse, even though the more common word for it is "Pferd")

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Pogue_Mahone_ t1_ja2srz1 wrote

Wal means strange or odd iirc. Hence the areas of wallonia, wallachia, wales etc on the borders of germanic peoples and also walnut which came from the mediterranean area and was strange to germanic peoples

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MonsterRider80 t1_ja2zhha wrote

The meaning could be related, but I learned it as meaning strange as in foreign, more specifically. The irony of the Anglo-Saxons calling the Welsh what amounts to “foreigners” is astounding lol

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Anacalagon t1_ja35vmu wrote

But the English word for Germany means kin... oops looked it up on Wikipedia and they say that's probably Bullsh**.

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pgm123 t1_ja3o1sc wrote

It likely derives from a name of a Celtic tribe and was generalized first to Celtic Latin speaker and then to foreigner.

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penguinpolitician t1_ja3kzzl wrote

The Koreans will still do it - call you a foreigner even in your own country.

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dethskwirl t1_ja3m3gh wrote

that's funny. so then their name for the whale is also just their word for "strange or odd", as in "that animal is so weird, let's just call it weird"

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TacoCommand t1_ja6xnsr wrote

Oh interesting! This would explain "uberwald" in Terry Pratchett as a shoutout to Transylvania but also "super weird".

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