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August 28

Corvuso - The name comes from an Indian word that means "Gathering place for crows."

In Corvuso, Minnesota the claim is made that that name comes from a word that means "Gathering place for crows".

I looked for sources, and the Meeker County museum has this claim (in the sectiontitle) on its website. There are and were many "Indian" languages and claims like this are worth doublechecking.

Is this nonsense? Should we email the museum? Polygnotus (talk) 11:05, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an "Indian" language. Corvus is Latin for crow. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is such a weird and confusing claim. I doubt crows have regular meeting spots unless there is a large quantity of food there. The Crow people probably do, but I doubt it was over there. People in India speak many languages, and there are over a thousand known Indigenous languages of the Americas. I have deleted the claim. If anyone objects I want to see a decent source. Polygnotus (talk) 11:26, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it derives from the nearby Crow River, which was called Khaŋǧí Šúŋ Watpá ("The Large Wing-feather of the Crow River") in the Dakota language.

The nearest I came to a reference was Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Minnesota (probably not an acedemic study) which says:

Corvuso: A bastardization of the Latin word corvus, which means "crow". The area must have had a lot of them.

Alansplodge (talk) 15:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, very interesting. I wouldn't describe Latin as an Indian language (but perhaps that is nitpicking). Polygnotus (talk) 16:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Crows 💯 have regular meeting spots, as anyone who has ever lived near a regular crow meeting spot can attest. You might be thinking of ravens, which are more solitary. Folly Mox (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox: is there a large quantity of food there? They are pretty smart so why would they regularly visit a spot unless there is a large quantity of food available. Polygnotus (talk) 01:57, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And of course rooks and ravens and jackdaws and magpies and crows are all crows. It all depends what you mean by "crows". DuncanHill (talk) 23:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, our raven article has it that [t]here is no consistent distinction between crows and ravens; the two names are assigned to different species chiefly based on their size. Still, it could be that bigger corvids tend to be more solitary; that's well outside my range of knowledge on the subject. --Trovatore (talk) 01:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that Corvuso was coined by Henry Schoolcraft, creator of countless macaronic place-names. —Tamfang (talk) 17:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ User:Polygnotus, re your "I doubt crows have regular meeting spots unless there is a large quantity of food there":

This is really synchronistic. For about 3 years in my youth, my family and I lived in the city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. The name was taken from the local indigenous Wiradjuri language, and was thought to mean "place of many crows" (since "wagga" means crow). The foundation plaque on the local Catholic church, St Michael's, is written in Latin, and includes the word "Corvopolitanus", meaning "city of crows". From the article: "Crows are considered a symbol of the city of Wagga Wagga, appearing in the council's logo, coat of arms, and throughout branding of local businesses, as well as in public artwork."

Only because of your question did I check out the Wagga Wagga article for some detail, fixed some vandalism, and discovered this: "Since 2019, the Wagga Wagga City Council has recognised this meaning as incorrect, instead adopting "many dances and celebrations." My late Dad was the City Engineer with the Council; he'd be turning in his grave now. I hope he's not reading Celestial Wikipedia. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:45, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just looked up the article and saw that Wagga Wagga "straddles the Murrumbidgee River". Good luck reading that without hearing in your head

...who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the Kangaroo/and killed the Cassowary on the plains of Timbuctoo

Or maybe you can, how would I know. --Trovatore (talk) 19:33, 29 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Well, I could have, until I read your post 2 minutes ago. I know a bit of Robert W. Service's stuff, but "The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail" had escaped my notice. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:27, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JackofOz:

Pluralization by reduplication is pretty smart.

Crowborough is gorse + berg meaning hill?

Ravenstone, Buckinghamshire is derived from the Old English for "Hrafn's farm"

Ravenstone, Leicestershire is somehow ALSO DERIVED FROM THAT SAME FARM???!??? despite being an hour drive

Etymology is incredibly confusing. Nothing is as it should be.

I was unable to find a place called murder.

Many dances and celebrations is objectively better than many crows.

Polygnotus (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"That same farm"? Hrafn was (and is) a common Nordic personal name as well as meaning 'raven'. Don't you think it possible that there were two Viking/Danish farmers living several tens of miles apart, both called Hrafn? Or that one or both of the farms had a prominent population of ravens so was/were named after them?

Incidentally, the term 'murder' for a group of crows was probably invented in the 15th century along with many other fanciful names for collections of animals, birds etc. It's unlikely that any old English place names derive from any of them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 20:35, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is also possible, but my headcanon is that this was a huge farm. Also, if Ravenstone,_Leicestershire#Historic_settlement is to be believed, it might've been a village instead of a farm. Polygnotus (talk) 22:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well Odin had ravens, and the vikings liked a kenning (and so did the Saxons, which is why Beowulf is so boring to read). It's probably Odin's farm in both instances. Like Grime's Graves. Card Zero (talk) 22:54, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure on what a "raven's farm" would be interpreted as, for a kenning. Maybe a battlefield, but that doesn't make sense as a settlement. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:59, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I thought maybe a battlefield too. Like a cadaver farm. But that's a good point, people are more likely to want to live on an actual farm. Card Zero (talk) 14:46, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now I remember those old examples of Buddhist art with decomposing corpses. Presumably made for meditating on the fact of death. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:45, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kusōzu, hadn't heard of this before. Seems like memento mori, so I stuck a few "see also" links in. Card Zero (talk) 17:27, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Berlin is currently assumed to have gotten its name from a Slavic word for swamp, yet, the popular folk etymology of "Bärlein" (small bear) has led to a bear symbol still being widely adopted. Outside of Indo-European languages, I think pluralization of nouns by reduplication actually is fairly common. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:32, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One should never let reality get in the way of a good story. Polygnotus (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Humph! One of my bugbears is made-up stories which purport to explain particular phrases (eg "square meal", "piss poor", "stony broke"). One thing that many of them have in common is that the era is wrong - usually the phrase is not recorded till centuries after the circumstances or events in the story, or occasionally it's the other way round and the phrase is older than the time of the story. Another common theme is that they provide a context in which a (to me) obvious metaphor is given a literal origin. In my view this amounts to an assumption that "people in the past had no imagination", which is a diminution of people-not-like-us that also underlies racism. ColinFine (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ColinFine: So this one is incorrect? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/square_meal#Etymology Polygnotus (talk) 18:21, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Michael Quinion says "Wonderful stuff. Rubbish, of course, but entertaining rubbish" of that and two other fanciful origin stories. https://worldwidewords.org/qa-squ3.html ColinFine (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ColinFine: Thank you, I deleted it. Polygnotus (talk) 19:04, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well done. I was considering doing that. But I wondered if it might be worth leaving a note as to the status of the story. ColinFine (talk) 19:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ User:ColinFine: Various people over the years have told me that "wog" is an acronym for "wily Oriental gentleman". When I doubt their story, they insist it's true. They can never give any evidence for it, other than "I've always been told that" (subtext: "therefore it must be true, and you can depend on it, and I won't be persuaded otherwise"). Then there's "fuck", which, so these etymological geniuses inform me, came from either "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" or "Fornication Under Consent of the King". Funny that it has two sources. The opposing camps should hold a pitched battle and settle it with blood and iron. Yes, that's the proper way these scholarly investigations usually take place. (I heard that somewhere, so it must be true.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WHAAOE: see List of common false etymologies of English words, which says "The use of acronyms to create new words was nearly non-existent in English until the middle of the 20th century". Alansplodge (talk) 11:24, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to that article, "wog" comes from "golliwog", a type of doll which keeps causing controversies in the U.K., but which most people in the U.S. have never heard of... AnonMoos (talk) 15:47, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the worst peddlars of false etymologies are the guides employed on HMS Victory, who by the end of a tour, will have convinced every visitor that almost all the proverbs and idioms in the English language have their origin in Nelson's sailing ships. Alansplodge (talk) 12:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Alansplodge: One of my best inventions is a great little template: User:Polygnotus/Templates/trustmebro. Polygnotus (talk) 12:06, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

:-) Alansplodge (talk) 12:08, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's an occupational hazard of tour guides. 😉

One of my favourite tours was at Berkeley Castle, where the guide would say "The story in this room is X, but the Castle Archivist says Y", giving you both options.

I'm a tour guide at two properties: I only tell two stories about the origins of words, and both I have researched and verified. ColinFine (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I remember (from 1986, wow) that the tour guide at Cardiff Castle, which belongs to the Marquess of Bute, said that the bars on the helm in Bute's arms represent the illegitimacy of his descent from Robert II of Scotland, a "bar to the throne". Never mind that the monarch (and every peer) also has a barred helm. —Tamfang (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if that is a misunderstanding of the word Bar: that article says Writing of Scots heraldry in English, Nisbet themself uses the term ‘bar’ for the bend sinister. ColinFine (talk) 22:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is some terminological confusion underlying all this. In British heraldry (which uses Anglo-French vocabulary), a bar is a horizontal band that can be neither dexter nor sinister. The bend, being diagonal, can be either, and the bend sinister was often used in Europe (including Britain) as a signifier of illegitimate royal descent (and thus of noble distinction). However, in French heraldry, a bend is called a barre, and with the close connection between Scotland and France promoting noble bilingualism, the bend particularly in Scotland (and probably elsewhere) was sometimes called a bar(re), leading to the anglophonically impossible "bar sinister". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]

In French, a bend is bande and a bend sinister is barre; bars in the English sense are fasces. —Tamfang (talk) 22:53, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Beefeaters at the Tower of London are notorious for amusing themselves by misleading gullible tourists. One confessed to telling visitors that he could open the bascules of Tower Bridge at any time, because he was a friend of the bridge operator. Having looked up the published times for the bridge openings, he would vigorously wave in the right direction at the appropriate moment and hey presto! Alansplodge (talk) 11:15, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Wittgenstein's Poker. Card Zero (talk) 23:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or Wittgestein's Banana? --Trovatore (talk) 02:09, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Heh.

A banana is flying first class from New York to L.A. Two scientists, one in each city, are talking on the phone about the banana. Because it is moving in relationship to its noun, the referent of the word banana never occupies one space, and anything that does not occupy one space does not exist. Therefore, a banana will arrive at JFK with no limousine into the city, even though the reservation was confirmed in L.A.

But that link is a typo. Now you made me create the article Wittgenstein's Banana, possibly my finest work. Card Zero (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although there is no text named "Wittgenstein's Banana" in the book itself. There apparently is one named "Schrödinger's Cat", which thematically seems a better fit, anyway. I'm thoroughly confused. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:52, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The quote above is a subsection of the "Schrödinger's Cat" chapter, and it's titled "Wittgenstein's Banana". The next subsection is titled "Elvis's Charcoal Briquette" and it's similar (but slightly worse), and so on for the rest of the chapter, culminating in "George Hamilton's Sun Lamp". Hope that helps. :) Card Zero (talk) 16:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So...in all seriousness (and my apologies if this was already brought up somewhere in this thread), this would most likely be a kind of calque, of sorts: the local Indians called the place, in their language, "the gathering place for crows", then whichever Europeans first came to the area (the French, maybe), gave the place a name with the same meaning, but in the Latin tongue in place of the American Indian tongue. This the the only sensible explanation of the claim as worded. 73.2.106.248 (talk) 13:57, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]