There is a mountain range on the border of Switzerland and France called the Jura, and it's been quite etymologically prolific. In addition to lending its name to a Swiss Canton and a French department, it's the source of the Montes Jura, a mountain range on the surface of the moon. More importantly, it was the source of a lot of important excavations of fossils and rocks dating back to the mid-Mesozoic era, a time period that the French called jurassique and we call Jurassic - that should be familiar. The name Jura comes from the Gaulish word iuris, which meant "wooded mountain" and became a Roman toponym (that explains the i to j spelling change). That probably comes from the Proto-Celtic word for "forest", jor, and would ultimately be from a Proto-Indo-European source.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. This year, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government and Linguistics. There, I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote a thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy, magna cum laude. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy trivia, politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law.
Archives
May 2022
TAGS |