Meaning and etymology in 1990: Show how much uncertainty honest etymology

Often oversimplified or wrong. Prefer onomastic dictionaries (Hanks) and language-specific scholarship. the open point is Hebrew, Arabic or Sanskrit names? Many are transparent in their home languages. Transparency is still not destiny. Translate as culture, not as a spell. Hanja supply etymological senses that families may intend as hopes or virtues. This atlas describes that practice; it does not endorse stroke-count luck.

Is folk etymology the same as etymology? No. Folk etymology is a later story speakers tell (a place-name “explained” by a legend). It is cultural data, not the original derivation. Why is cultural depth high on this page? Because meaning systems are old and elaborate. Depth is not the same as truth about the future.

It can help you tell a family story or avoid an accidental rude word in another language. That is craft, not magic. They count strings, not meanings. A rising name can have a beautiful gloss and still be fashion. Sacred texts and classic dictionaries treated names as interpretable. Comparative linguistics later reconstructed roots that those older books could not have known.