For instance, when I was a child a teacher told me that the name of London’s neighborhood “Elephant and Castle” is a corruption of the Spanish “Infante de Castilla”. Aparently the Infante stayed there or something like that and Infant of Castile ended up becoming Elephant and Castle.
Another example is that the word “chumino” (one of the many words we have in Spanish for p*ssy) has its origins in the English sailors who arrived in Cádiz. They asked the prostitutes to lift their skirts and “show me now”, which then, translated to Spanish phonetics became “chumino” (choo-me-noh)
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In English they say “spruce”, because when they asked the Polish woodsellers what was that wood, they answered “z Prus” (“from Prussia”).
Entre nous, I’ll ignore all the examples from French here and take a word from our Slavic neighbours.
We got the word quark originally from West Slavic, either from Polish/Lower Sorbian saying twaróg or from Czech/Upper Sorbian saying tvaroh/twaroh. At first we called it twarc, but the combination tw is uncommon in German and over time it became Quark.
It’s not my language but in Slovak they have “hemendex” and I think it’s beautiful. ☺️
Ham. And. Eggs.
In Warsaw there is neighbourhood called Dynasy which is mispronounced name of family de Nassau who owned it at some point. There is also a Foksal street which origins from Vauxhall. Belweder palace comes from Italian bello vedere. Wilanów palace is, you guessed it, villa nova. Żoliborz district is a polonised form of French Joli Bord.
Ont krut förgås inte så lätt. Bad gunpowder does not perish so easily, which make zero sense, until realised it a German saying that been translated to to Swedish and Ont krut is how the german word unkraut ( Weed) sounds to us.
So the real saying is Weed does not perish so easily, and that makes sense.
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And then we have the owls, I suspects owls in the bog ( Jag anar ugglor i mossen), it is Danish saying where the word for wolf sound too much like owls for us. So Danes suspects Wolfs in the bog and we suspects owls.
I hope the chumino one is true because that’s hilarious
In Italian they say ‘bistecca’ to mean ‘steak’, which is a corruption of ‘beef steak’. The word is applied to any meat, though, so you can have a ‘bistecca di maiale’: a pork beef steak.
Slightly side of topic, but Pendle Hill in Lancashire is actually named “Hill Hill Hill.” “Pen” meaning hill in Cumbric, “dle” being a modification of the Old English “hyll”, and then the modern English “Hill” stuck on the end in case you haven’t quite got the message yet.
Armbrust, literally arm breast, for crossbow. It evolved from Arquebuse.
Boulevard in French comes from German Bollwerk. When city walls became obsolete once the artillery evolved, the were oftentimes torn down and a broad way was put there instead.
It’s often thought that the River Avon is actually named “River river”, because Anglo-Saxons asked the native Britons what the name of the river was. They replied “Afan” (river), so that eventually became Avon…
I just recently heard the expression “Gellerettli” for a pocket watch. It stems from the french question “quel heure est il?” asking for the current time. So it’s basically a condensed form of the question turned into a time related noun.
The Elephant and Castle example is a myth, but interesting nonetheless.
The German word for Cellphone is Handy no one knows exactly why but the theory is that early on technicians or marketing people called them handy devices and the adjective somehow stuck.
The French word for a louvre is le vasisdas from the German.
A Czarist Russian dignitary was shown the splendid new station at Vauxhall and thought it meant railway station. The Russian word for station is voksal.
Older people might use the phrase “San fairy Ann” to mean “it doesn’t matter”. It comes from the French phrase *ça ne fait rien*.
~~And then there’s “kangaroo”, which comes from an Aboriginal word meaning “I don’t understand”.~~ edit: ah no, that’s a myth apparently
‘Cookie’ in German is ‘Keks’ which is how you would write “cakes” with German spelling. Came about only 150 or years ago.
In Brussels, there is a location called [“Tour et Taxis](https://tour-taxis.com/fr/)”, which is actually an ex-industrial zone, made of old warehouse buildings transformed into exhibition and event halls. The funny thing is that there is absolutely no tower (“tour”) and there is no taxi stand either, which can be a bit puzzling.
This name comes actually the old rich German family that purchased this piece of land in the XVIIth century: the house of *Thurn und Tassis.* The local population adopted the francised name *Tour et Taxis* (note that the word “taxis” did not exist in its current meaning at that time, it is a mere coincidence), and the name stuck until today.
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Still in Brussels, there is a (delicious IMHO) local pastry called in French “[pain à la grecque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_%C3%A0_la_grecque)*”*, literaly “bread cooked the Greek way”. But it has nothing to do with Greek cooking: the original name in Flemish dialect was *Wolfgrecht brood,* ie “bread from the ditch with wolves” – no wolves there, but originally the surrounding fields belonged to a person named *Wolf)* . This ditch was a place where the poor used to gather in the Middle Ages to get food given by monks (there is still a street called “rue du Fossé aux Loups” – “Wolvengracht” in the center). The monks used to give away old bread with bits of sugar in it, and this recipe was passed on as the pastry still made today. When Brussels was gradually francised, the Flemish word *Grecht* (“ditch”) was then transformed into *Grec* (“greek”).
A Russian term for a big railway station, any one, is vokzal (pronounced as voh-kzAhl).
It is a localised version of Vauxhall in London.
At the time when railways started being built in Russia (1830s), Vauxhall had a pleasure garden with a railway station.
Apparently, my country of origin just got railway stations.
Hate to break it to you but that idea for Elephant and Castle has been [debunked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_and_Castle#The_myths_of_the_Infanta_and_the_Cutlers'_Company)
We have a phrase “(Je mi to) šumafuk” = I don’t care. The “šumafuk” is apparently messed up French: “Je m’en fous” = I don’t care.
Unfortunately the infanta de Castile thing is a myth as the area is just named after a pub. A shame really because the myth is more fun, although an area being named after a pub is about as English as I can imagine.
The Dutch word kazematten, a small concrete or stone bunker, comes from the Italian casamatta.
There’s also plenty of Indonesian words that made it into Dutch. Like piekeren (to worry, from the Indonesian pikir) or soebatten (fruitlessly debating, from the Indonesian sobat).
In Turkish “İstanbul” comes from the Greek phrase “εἰς τὴν Πόλιν” (eis tin polin) meaning “to the city.” The city was just “the City” to the local Greeks, and when they gave directions the phrase was heard as a proper name, and thus the city became called İstanbul.
My favourite in Polish is wihajster for something you forgot the name of. From German “Wie heisst er?” (what it’s called?)
When wishing someone good luck, a German might wish them ‘Hals- und Beinbruch’ (broken neck and leg), which apparently comes from Yiddish ‘hatsloche un broche’ (success and blessing), originally from Hebrew ‘hatzlacha u-bracha’.
It is also a possible source for the English theatre greeting ‘break a leg’.
A lot of place names in Ireland are just Anglicised versions of the original Irish names.Some examples:
Duibhlinn (Black Pool) became Dublin.
Dún na nGall(the fortress of the foreigners) became Donegal.
Cill Dara (the church of the oak) became Kildare.
Seanchill (old church) became Shankill.
“Camone” – An expression in Portuguese to designate a foreigner, it comes from “Come on” in english.
“Naifa” – Slang for “knife”, from English.