Language

How did things get their names? Like, why is a book called "book" instead of something like "oober-doober"? Is it possible that a book's name REALLY IS "oober-doober" and we are using the wrong word? Noah L. Age 8

Comments

Hello Noah!

Right back from the early ancient Greek philosophers, people have wondered about questions like yours. What things are due to the nature of the world? What things are due to decisions by people? It's a good sort of question.

For example, it seems to be a law of nature that heavy things drop to the ground when you let go of them (nothing we can do about that!). But it is due to a rule we've made up that people in your country drive on the right (or the left, whichever it is). People could decide to change the driving rule -- as people in Sweden did some years ago.

So: it doesn't matter what people choose or want or decide: heavy things fall. It does matter what people choose or want or decide to do when it comes to the rule about driving. Other cases are less obvious. What makes stealing wrong? Is it like the heavy-things-fall case, i.e. is stealing wrong whatever people think? Or is it more like the driving-on-the-right case, so that stealing is counted as wrong because people have just decided on that rule? (There's a philosophical question for you!)

What about your case? Well, it seems that the use of the sound "book" (rather than "livre" or "jegyzetfüzet") to pick out books is more like the driving-on-the-right case. Different communities drive on different sides of the road: different communities use different words for the same thing. It's a matter of "convention" either case. There's no "right" side to drive, it's just that people round here have the practice of driving on the right. There's no "right" word for books, other than what people round here conventionally call them. But who knows what accidents of history made communities use a sound like "book" for books? We can't trace things back far enough really to know. (You can probably think of cases of nicknames or private words among your friends which seemed to get started and stick around: often it is a bit mysterious how things get started!)

I hope that helps!

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