Linguistic Coincidences

Chance Similarities / False Cognates

The terms chance similarity (Campbell and Mixco 2007) or false cognate (Wikipedia) refer to when words from different languages with similar or related meanings also sound similar or related, which might sometimes lead to the false assumption that the words are etymologically linked.

Here is a list of these that I have collected over the years:

English dog and Mbabaram dog

If you’ve heard of false cognates before, this might be the one you know, so it’s probably a good place to start.

  • The English word dog comes from the Old English word dogga/docga of unknown origin [Etymonline, Wiktionary].

  • The Mbabaram word dog comes from an older word gudaga, evidence of which can be found the related languages of Yidin (where ‘dog’ is still gudaga) and Dyirbal (where ‘dog’ is guda) [Dixon 1983].

English much and Spanish mucho ‘many, much’

  • English much comes from Middle English muchel ‘large, tall; many, in a large amount; great, formidable’, from Old English micel ‘great in amount or extent’, from Proto-Germanic *mekilaz, from PIE root *meg- ‘great’. [Etymonline]

  • Spanish mucho ‘many, a lot, very much’ comes from Latin multus ‘much, many,’, from Proto-Indo-European *ml-to-, from root *mel- ‘strong, great, numerous’. [RAE Spanish Dictionary, Etymonline]

Mexican Spanish mole (a Mexican sauce or stew) and Spanish moler ‘to grind’

  • The word for mole comes from the Nahuatl molli ‘sauce’, which is also the source of the -mole suffix in guacamole (ahuacatl ‘avocado’ + molli ‘sauce’ = ahuacamolli ‘guacamole’). The word molli is thought to derive from a root word *mo:l that relates to things becoming liquid/soft. [Nawatl Scholar blog, University of Oregon’s Nahuatl Dictionary]

  • The Spanish verb moler ‘to grind’ comes from Latin molĕre ‘to grind’ and is unrelated to mole (the food) and the -mole suffix in guacamole [RAE Spanish Dictionary]

Others

Some other examples I’ve seen that I intend to look into the etymology of further before adding to the main list:

  • English bad and Persian/Farsi بد (bad) ‘bad’
  • English isle and English island
  • Latin deus ‘god’ and Greek θεός (theos) ‘god’
  • English emoticon and Japanese emoji
  • Mandarin 可愛 (kě’ài) ‘cute’ and Japanese 可愛い (kawaii) ‘cute’
  • English male and English female
  • English day and Spanish día / Portuguese dia
  • English have and Latin habeo
  • Mandarin 女儿 (nǚ’ér) ‘daughter’ and Spanish nuera ‘daughter-in-law’
  • English tomato and English potato
  • English man/woman and English human