"FOLK-ETYMOLOGY."

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1625, 17 December 1912, Page 8

"FOLK-ETYMOLOGY."

' Sir,T-I have to thank "J. 8.8." for his' correction. He writes, with knowledge, and shows that.though the authority of a post-mark should be final, it is not always so. There have been a few in' New Zealand lately corrected after much protest. For instance, it is not long since the absurd "To Nui" gave place to the descriptive "Tinui." Some newspapers still print "Onga Onga," "Tuki Tuki," "Koro Koro," "Piri Piri," etc. There are perhaps hundreds of such reduplicate names, each of which should, without exception, be written or printed'as an eight-letter word; sometimes they are quite incorrectly hyphened. The error is being gradually but slowly corrected in official documents, but some are still retained in railway time-tables, and some still (I think) in postal names. A like mistake is made by American officials in "Pago Pago" (pronounced "Pangopango," the "ng" being, as in "sing," a digraf for a single sound). In Maori there are a few disyllabic reduplicates, like "Nainai," to make two words of which is absurd. "J.R.8." is correct as to the common mispronunciation of "Seatouu," though I have not bo'far 6een the word mis-spelled. . I may . add that, rernemboring that "Eos" is a common element in Highland place-names,' I. had turned up the Eov. Smythe Palmer's "Folk-Etymology," in which. a good many English forms corrupted from Gaelic appear; also Charles Mackay's "Glossary of Obscuro 'Words," in which Gaelic is hio favourite quarry, but they did not help me. But I learn from Smythe Palmer that the English Christian-name "Bose" has come to be identified with the flower by a way perhaps moro irregular than the HighlandScots "Ros." Originally, it meant "fame,". Old Teutonic "Hros," Latinised "Eoeda," Fr. "Eohais," Eng. "Eoesia," "Eohesia," "Bose." Further, one Bohesia do Vere, daughter of a Chief Justice of England under Henry V, erected a cross .by the highway. The spot, according to a chronicler (1(331), 'in processe of time by | little and little, grew to be a towne, which, instead of Hohesiaes Crosse was called Eohesiaes Towne, and now contracted into Bo'iston.'—l am, etc., AN OLD JOUENALIST. ';