With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my crooked arm for a pillow - is not joy to be found therein? Riches and honors acquired through unrighteousness are to me as the floating clouds.

Confucius was born Kǒng Qiū (in pinyin) in the Shandong Province of China around 550 BC. Legend has it that he came from a rich family that had fallen on hard times, and spent most of his life working various tradesman jobs. In later life he began speaking, teaching, and traveling widely in China, espousing his philosophy. At that time he began to be called Kǒng Fūzǐ, “Master Kǒng” (note the zǐ element, which is identical with the zǐ in Laozǐ (Lao Tzu), “Old Master”).

His writings came to the attention of the West in the 1600’s through Jesuit translations of Chinese works into Latin. Kǒng Fūzǐ was Latinized as Confucius.

The original Chinese Kǒng is a common family name, one which, like English king, is a container of energy — “k” is a container, and “ng” is too, but one that is more active in gathering energy to itself. The word Fūzǐ “master”, which combines zǐ with a somewhat obsolete prefix fū, has a sense of directed control, and one that derives from the free action of the master (”f”). Together, the names suggest a master of contained energy.

Influenza has been passed through so many languages, and had so many different meanings along the way, it’s really a lot like a communicable disease itself.

It began as bhel, meaning “blow up, swell” in Proto Indo European (bhel is also the ancestor of phallus, foliage, bowl, bulk, fool, boulder, bull, balloon, and even Balder), which in later Proto Indo European gave rise to bhleug, “to overflow” (ancestor of bloat, fluctuate, flux, fluent, affluent, superfluous, etc.). In Latin bhleug became fluere, “to flow”, and derived from this was influere, “flow in, influx”. In Medieval Latin (which was rarely a spoken language, but used for scholarship and theology throughout Europe), related influentia was used to describe the influx of mystic power from the stars to humanity, i.e. astrological influences. A thousand years later, influentia was borrowed into Italian — Latin’s most direct child — as influenza, still referring to the influence of power from the stars to human affairs. But the most visible and terrible of such influenze was pestilence, and since 1500 in Italy influenza has referred to disease. In 1743, there was a terrible outbreak of influenza throughout Europe, and English borrowed influenza from Italian to describe the epidemic. In the 1830’s the shortening flu appeared; and since the mid 19th century, influenza/flu has also been used to describe severe colds.

It’s interesting that flu is the shortened form of influenza – it’s not the primary stressed syllable, as is the usual case with abbreviations, but it’s an excellent choice phonosemantically. The communicability of the flu is indicated by flu’s similarity to fly, and its effusive effect on the sufferer is reflected in its similarity to flow. In both cases an expansive, fluid energy is set free (”fl”); in the case of flu, the energy (long “u”) is speedy and flowing, too.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The names that can be named are the not the eternal names.
It is from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang,
While the named is the mother of the multitudes.
– Lao Tzu

The central figure of Taoism. According to tradition, he was supposed to have lived in the 6th century BC, around the same time as Confucius and the Buddha. It is he who supposedly wrote the Tao Te Ching (”The Book of the Way and (its) Virtue”), the text fundamental to Taoist thought. Lao Tzu means “Old Master”, so it is probably a title of honor rather than a personal name. Due to the difficulty in translating the sounds of Chinese to Roman characters, there are a variety of transliterations for his name, including Laozi, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tse, Laotze, Lao Zi, etc.

Lao means “old”, and it has the same long “o” and “l” that mark the English old. In old, a wholesome, earthy energy expands to fill all available space, and culminates in a doorway (perhaps Death). In lao, the wholesome, earthy energy also expands to fill available space, but the energy is balanced and even, and there is no ending implied (although, to be fair, Chinese syllables have only three possible endings: -n, -ng, and nothing).

Similarly, tzu has the same “s”, “t” that master does. (Don’t be fooled by that “z” — the sound is almost the same as English “s”. Tzu is pronounced rather like “tseh”.) This “ts/st” indicates directed energy moving purposefully along a path. In master, this energy is balanced and even, and the implication is that the master is the source of the energy (”m”); while in tzu, the energy is connective and hard-working, and the tzu is not necessarily the source of the energy, but only its guide.

The People of the Dawn Land, the Wabanakiyik, numbered at least 40,000, living in scattered bands throughout what is now Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, before the first epidemics hit five hundred years ago. The diseases spread from European settlements in the far south and north of New England, so that the Wabanakiyik were hit long before they encountered Europeans face to face. By the time the English landed in Plymouth, the Wabanakiyik (usually called the Abenaki today) had lost between 50-75% of their population. 150 years of further epidemics, war, and forced migrations, reduced them to around 1,000. Today they have rebounded to 12,000, split between the United States and Canada, but many of them still have not achieved tribal recognition from the US government.

The Wabanakiyik word for “one who squirts” was something like segongw or segonku or seganku, and this was applied to the notorious ungainly black and white animal that visited their gardens at night in search of insects and grubs. The European settlers borrowed the word, spelling it squunk at first.

The word skunk is a remarkable example of sound-meaning correspondence that reaches across language families. Skunk is not related to any other English word, but it looks like a combination of squirt (from about 1470, imitative) and stunk, an irregular nonstandard past participle of stink, which is from Old English stincan. The onset “sk” suggests directed motion from a container; the “unk”, meanwhile, is similar to lung, sung, and tongue, all of which have to do with breathing and the throat. (According to Margaret Magnus’s phonosemantic analysis, the short “u” is “thoughtful and relaxed”, but I suspect it has other meanings.)

Paradise is ultimately of Proto Indo European origin, but its journey to English has taken it on a grand tour of the ancient world. It’s formed from a combination of two PIE roots:

• per, a preposition meaning “through, across, around”, the ancestor of English per (as in three per dollar) and peri- (as in periscope, perimeter, periphery, and period);
• dheigh, “to knead, to form from clay”, ancestor of dairy, figurine, dough, and fiction.

These elements came into Avestan, an Indo European language spoken in Persia (modern Iran) around 1000 BC, as pairi and deza respectively. Avestan pairidaeza literally meant “create a form around; enclosed area”, and was used to refer to enclosed yards, parks, and gardens. Pairidaeza was borrowed into Greek as paradeisos, and originally referred to Persian hunting parks or orchards; but it was used in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, to refer to the Garden of Eden. In the Greek New Testament, paradeisos was used to refer to heaven itself. Paradeisos in turn was borrowed into Latin as paradisus, descended into Old French as paradis, and finally entered English around 1175. Originally in English it referred only to the Garden of Eden, but by 1300 it could mean any heavenly, Eden-like place.

The combination of the “p” and “r” in the first syllable indicates a place associated with strong energies. The vowel — a short “a” usually — indicates a balanced, even area. The second syllable continues the association with balanced energy, but the third introduces a new theme: a doorway that leads to an expansive place, a region of intellectual and creative pursuits, goal-oriented, conducted with flourish. Does sound rather nice, doesn’t it?

From Proto Indo European ego, which is also the ancestor of Latin ego. The Latin ego simply meant “I”, but was picked up by psychoanalysts in the early 20th century to mean one part of the Self. Ego in Proto Indo European became ekan in Proto Germanic, and then ic in Old English (compare ich in German). Then, around 1100, dialects in the north of England began to shorten ic to i, for unknown reasons. This dialect change slowly spread southward. Ich and ek could still be found occasionally in the north, especially before vowels (e.g. I like apples vs. Ich/ek ate an apple), as late as 1400, and in the south as late as the 1700’s. I has been capitalized since about 1250 in order to distinguish it clearly in handwritten manuscripts.

The standard phonosemantic meaning of the long “i” is an expansive, roomy energy, particularly oriented toward mind and art. It may be that this reflects the usual British/American attitude that the self is something oriented toward reason and creativity. Emotions, after all, are things that the “I” has to deal with, control, or experience; they’re not really thought of as part of the “I” itself. Contrast that with the Old English conception of “I” — ic – a light, tense energy that is contained (presumably contained in your body), or the Latin conception of “I” — ego – which is a hard-working, grounded energy. Also, in our own time, there are the varying pronunciations found in dialects, such as the “I” of the Southeastern United States — pronounced more like ah – a balanced, flat energy. These pronunciations may reflect a great deal about self-image in these societies.

Choir is from Proto Indo European ghoro, which came into Greek as khoros, “band of singers”. In the great Greek tragedies, the khoros gave voice to the moral and religious sentiments going on in the play. Khoros was borrowed into Latin as chorus, meaning “choir”; and from there it descended into Old French as quer, “choir of a church”. In about 1300 quer was borrowed into English as quyre. As spelling was standardized in the 16th and 17th centuries, quyre was changed to choir to reflect the old Latin spelling.

The phonosemantics of choir suggest a contained, controlled, willful energy that is expressed in a roomy, expansive, artistic manner, with great power.

Muhammad is from Arabic, a language of the Semitic language family. Muhammad comes from the Proto-Semitic root hmd, “praise, extol”, from which came the verb hammada, “to praise highly”. From that was derived the adjective muhammad, “praised; commendable”. Muhammad, then, means “the Praiseworthy” — similar to the original meaning of the English word worship .

Since this name is Semitic in origin, there are some curious linguistic features here that aren’t present in most English etymologies. Note that the “h” in Muhammad, hmd, and hammad isn’t really an “h” sound as in English; instead, it’s pronounced like the “ch” in German Bach, except rather further back in the throat. Arabic has a fair number of consonants pronounced deep in the throat in this way. Native English speakers tend to hack and gargle when they first try to pronounce these consonants, but in the skilled larynx of a native Arabic speaker, they are quite beautiful. Second, notice that the Proto-Semitic root hmd has no vowels at all. This is not because it was pronounced with no vowels, but because the vowels were on a separate root. In Semitic languages, consonant roots and vowel roots are interleaved to create words. In this case, the vowel root a-a-a (probably indicating a verb, but honestly I’m just making an educated guess) combines with hmd to create hammada.

The primary syllable of Muhammad is “-hamm-”; it recalls the English word home, but instead of the vowel indicating a healthy, earthy energy, it is a connection to Source. In “-hamm-”, the Source energy originates from a place of safety and belonging, and results in manifestation. The first syllable, “mu-”, shows that the secure Source energy is manifested in a thoughtful and relaxed way; while the final syllable, “-ad”, shows that the manifestation of Source energy leads to a final decision.

A Norn is a kind of female spirit found in Norse theology, who can cause great toil and trouble, or bring blessings and happiness. There are a great many of them, but according to Snorri Sturluson, author of the Prose Edda, the three most important Norns are giantess sisters who draw water from the Well of Fate and with it water the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. The names of these three Norns were Urðr (wyrd, “fate” or simply “future”), Verðandi (derived from the Old Norse verb verða, “to become”) and Skuld (related to shall); thus they were all concerned with the future, in one way or another.

The origin of the name Norn is unknown. One possibility is that it is related to the Swedish word norna, “to warn, to speak secretly”, which may be imitative (like mutter, growl, and howl, the sound of the word imitates the sound itself). It may also be related to a word meaning “to twist, to twine”, and may refer to the twisting of fate, although the idea that the Norns wove the fate of the world appears to have been borrowed from Greek theology.

Norn is a word that thrums with earthy, solid energy, directed powerfully toward one goal — the future. Compare it to other earthy, directed words with a similar sound pattern, such as thorn, born, morn(ing), horn, and warn.

Prayer is from Proto Indo European prek, which meant “ask” or “entreat”; it is also the ancestor of precarious and postulate. In Latin, prek generated the noun prex, “prayer, request, entreaty”; and the verb precari, “ask earnestly, beg” was derived in turn from that. From precari came the adjective precarius, “obtained by prayer”; and from that came the noun precaria, “thing gotten by prayer”. (Thus, if you prayed for a horse and you got one, you could call it a precaria.) In Old French this became preiere, and it was borrowed into English as prayer by 1300.

Prayer starts with a point-source with great energy (perhaps the emotional state of the one praying), and the energy spreads out and extends from there. The sound “y” indicates a trusting optimism in the result, and the “r” tacked to the end gives more force to that trust. Overall the impression is one of a message sent out with trust, optimism, and great emotional power.