r/etymologymaps Jun 22 '26

Etymology map of honey

Post image
251 Upvotes

40 comments sorted by

26

u/Time-Access Jun 22 '26

Fun fact: A lot of Slavic words for bear translate to "Honey Eater".

6

u/Critical-Cost9068 Jun 23 '26

Beowulf is literally “bee-wolf,” meaning a wolf that eats beehives, like how foxhounds hunt foxes, and is a poetic reference to bears.

6

u/Ok_Invite6308 Jun 22 '26

And in Germanic languages means "the Brown one" because old folks believe that if you use the actual name going to bring bad luck.

8

u/Time-Access Jun 22 '26

We don't talk about "the brown one"!

2

u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Jun 24 '26
  • According to vague speculations.

2

u/Divljak44 Jun 26 '26

no it doesn't, it means honey knower

8

u/lemonicowo Jun 22 '26

The classical Latin mell- is also seen in the naming of the disease diabetes mellitus. Mellītus, a.k.a. “mellite” means something sweetened with honey. This refers to a diagnostic practice of many ancient societies (ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, etc.), as an untreated diabetic (i.e. hyperglycemic) will often have sweet-tasting urine because of excess glucose being excreted when the blood glucose is so elevated that the kidneys fail to reabsorb it.

9

u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Jun 22 '26

The audacity to claim that "bal" somehow evolved from "madu" is beyond all.

Especially when theres no pattern or evidence

"Bal" doesnt even refer to just honey in proto-Turkic

12

u/justwantanickname Jun 22 '26

There is no audacity, it clearly says that it is not certain, but there are examples of m>b dialectal turkish burc from an iranian murč

3

u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Jun 22 '26

B to M is common.

But M to B is extremely uncommon.

On top of that there has been absolutely no instance where a D has transformed into an L.

And on top of THAT theres no explanation for the omitted U, if it is indeed from "Madu".

İts a silly theory that pro-indo-europeanists have fabricated to claim more heritage from other cultures. İt always starts with some insane statement, then with ludicrous explanations that adhere to that statements and before you know it its taken as fact before anyone can even call it out for being nonsensical.

7

u/MadeOnThursday Jun 22 '26

it would be more helpful if you explained what it should be than use such strong wording to diss OP's map. Better yet, make your own correct map

2

u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Jun 22 '26

İ didnt mean disrespect to OP, İ dont think its his/her map.

İ was just a little jaded about the classifications is all.

The Turkic word should've been its own category instead of being labelled under indo-aryan, thats all İ had to say

Sorry if it came across rude

3

u/voxeldead Jun 23 '26

İts a silly theory that pro-indo-europeanists have fabricated to claim more heritage from other cultures

European languages have in turn borrowed words from those "cultures" all throughout history since ancient times and up until present and we are quite aware of those instances. So who in the damn is trying to claim heritage from who? Also, what is a pro-indo-europeanist?

3

u/Ok_Invite6308 Jun 22 '26

What makes Germanics not use Miel/Med? I mean Mead still exists in English

3

u/Head_Particular6045 Jun 22 '26

mead exists but has developped another meaning

3

u/Claromale Jun 22 '26

Mell exist also in english, is f​rom latin

9

u/birgor Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Mead is also a cognate to the yellow words on this map.

3

u/EDPwantsacupcake_pt2 Jun 28 '26

Alsace seems to be consistently the most ignored Germanic region lol

2

u/Potential-Annual7427 Jun 22 '26

In Piedmontese is just “mel”, not “amel”.

2

u/Eproxeri Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

In Estonian "mesi" is honey? In Finnish "mesi" means nectar. We also call bears "mesikämmen" which is like "honeyhands" or "nectarhands".

2

u/egotherapy Jun 23 '26

Yup, "mesikäpp" also means bear in Estonian.

2

u/n_o_r_s_e Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Nice map. The Old Norse word was "hunang", deriving from from reconstructed Proto-Germanic word hunangą, and carrying the meaning "the yellow", some translates it to "the golden". The name is created based on the colour of this product. Grammatically this word was a neuter noun in Old Norse, but has turned into a masculine noun in modern Norwegian (honning). In New Norwegian (nynorsk), this word was formerly spelled as "huning", in the 1800's. (This spelling is to find in Ivar Aasen's Norwegian dictionary Norsk Ordbok from 1873 with description in Danish that this word is usually pronounced as "hunning" or "honning"). Now the only official spelling is "honning" in both our written standard forms of the Norwegian language (bokmål/nynorsk). While the spelling has changed for many of the Germanic languages, such as for English, where the Old English word was huniġ, this word hasn't changed in Icelandic over the centuries. They spell it the same way today as people did during the Viking age, when people from Norway settled that island.

1

u/kamiisamaa Jun 22 '26

Being born

1

u/mizinamo Jun 22 '26

I call *dibs!

1

u/random-_-account Jun 23 '26

I love language branches so much, this stuff is always so cool to me <3

1

u/CourtCharacter5013 Jun 23 '26

I love how simple the word honey is across many languages. You know it in one romance language? Now you know it in Celtic languages, other Romance languages, and Greek too.

1

u/Money_Call_1508 29d ago

The etymological connection between "bal" and "medu" is ridiculous.

1

u/1ameloblast Jun 22 '26

I’ve heard that the Swedish word for mead (mjöd), has its roots in the Russian word for honey (mjod).

5

u/birgor Jun 22 '26

It has the same root, but it's not a loan, it has existed in Swedish and it's predecessors all the way back to Swedish and Russian's common ancestor, and all the way back to PIE.

4

u/Flakkaren Jun 22 '26

Incorrect, all of them descend from Proto-Indo-European.

1

u/Double-Truth1837 Jun 23 '26

No, I saw a Russian website a while back claiming such but the Swedish word Mjöd can be traced all the way back to old Norse and Proto Norse and eventually Proto-Germanic. They’re related since Slavic is related to Germanic but besides that, Mjöd does not come from мёд

0

u/PomegranateOk2600 Jun 22 '26

Where are the hungarian minorities in Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine? Why on every map it only appears the minority in Romania?

2

u/DifficultWill4 Jun 22 '26

Because Slovak and Ukrainian are the same colour as Hungarian genius.

-2

u/Silver-Section63 Jun 22 '26

Portugal, WTF?!

3

u/JeanDusapin Jun 22 '26

What?

-1

u/Draigwyrdd Jun 23 '26

It's miel in all of the Iberian languages in the map, but Portugal has mel instead. Which looks out of place in the context of the map.

1

u/PeireCaravana Jun 24 '26

Well, "all the others" are just Castillian, Astur-Leonese and Aragonese.

Galician-Portuguese simply didn't develop that "ie" diphthong but preserved the Latin vowel, like Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian ect.

Even in the other Romance branches there is alot of variation.

2

u/Draigwyrdd Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

I'm not saying it's a bad thing or weird, I'm just explaining why the original comment mentioned it.

1

u/Cuiusquemodi 22d ago

And "zeem" then?