linguoboy wrote:Shiba wrote:Why do you say that? I'd seriously like to know, I'm not looking for an argument.
They don't give any citations, so there's no telling where they're getting their information from. I've been interested in name etymologies for ages, I've read a lot of scholarly works on the subject, and I've seen a lot of inaccuracies in BTN's etymologies. With a little work, I could find some concrete examples.
Ah, that sucks. It's the only source of names and surnames with a reasonably large database that I've found so far, I'll just take their etymologies with a pinch of salt now. At least they do often provide more than one possible meaning, so you can kinda decide which one you like best.
linguoboy wrote:Shiba wrote:Also, there doesn't seem to be anything impossible about their etymology of the name "Amelia".
That's not saying much, is it? It's not impossible that I could be a native-speaker of Hmong. But as it happens I'm not, and if I claimed I was, it would be reasonable for you to ask to see proof.
Haha, yeah, but what I mean is that it seems to make sense. At least, Amala -> Amalia makes sense; Amalia -> Amelia is perhaps a bit harder to explain. That is to say, it's easy enough to come up with an ad hoc explanation, but there doesn't seem to be a reason for that a to change to an e.