Monday, April 4, 2011

Hybridizations

Thanks to my suitemate Justus for this bit of trivia.

Hybrid words are words that have roots in more than one language. For example, hexadecimal, from Greek (h)exi- for six and Latin decimus for tenth, might have been sexidecimal if purely Latin or hexidektal if purely Greek, but the ubiquity of decimal in English and the dominance of hexa- (consider hexagon, hexameter, Hexameron) yielded the word we know today.

Another interesting example is aquaphobia, which utilizes the Latin word for water but the Greek for fear, and is associated only with a general trepidation over water. Its Greek-only cousin, hydrophobia, normally refers to rabies.

Your challenge: Give a place name that is a hybrid with one root in a Native American language and the other in Greek.

2 comments:

  1. Indianapolis almost works... except the Indiana part refers to the Native Americans rather than their language.

    ReplyDelete