I wish they wouldn't do that

Am I the only one who gets a little irritated (it isn't strong enough to actually count as annoyance) by television programs which try to add a little interest by including linguistic information but do it by repeating folk etymologies and urban myths which five minutes with a dictionary would disprove.

Take the program that's on at the moment, Bargain Hunt. A few minutes ago the presenter was looking at an ivory carving of two gnomes. To spice it up the presenter asked us if we were familiar with the origin of the word "gnome". It is, he told us, an acronym meaning Guarding Naturally Over Mother Earth. This is of course utter nonsense. You should always hear alarm bells ringing when anyone claims that an old word (gnome was first recorded in the 16th century) is an acronym. 

Gnome is of course no such thing. It is generally considered to have been coined by Paracelcus possibly based on a Greek word meaning "earth dweller". An alternate theory is that it was based on a form of "gignoskein" - to know.

What is pretty damned unlikely is that someone writing five centuries ago in German, at a time when acronyms were all but unused, would choose to coin a new word by forming an acronym from English words.

The trouble is that people believe these things - especially if given a specious authority by the almighty television. 

A possible explanation is that there are several thousand hits in Google putting the same theory. Sooner or later everything turns up on the internet and they way things are going - with BBC researchers apparently using the internet as a primary source - truth is going to disappear altogether replaced by consensus belief. 

I just wish they would check a bit more carefully before spouting nonsense to a gullible public.

(Incidentally, later in the program, explaining the inscription G-IV-R on a piece of furniture he referred to the GR as George Rex (so far so good) and the IV as "one vee, or four". Surely that should be read as "eye vee, or four".)

The Etymological Fallacy

This morning there was a discussion program on television which, after two relatively sensible topics, moved on to discussing the case of the Jedi Knight versus Tesco. The case, for anyone who missed it, revolved around a self-professed Jedi who was ejected from a supermarket because he refused to remove his hood, claiming it was an essential part of his faith. He's been making a fair amount of noise ever since about how this is religious discrimination and how a female follower of Islam can wear far more concealing garb without being ejected. The stated topic was "do ALL religions deserve equal status".
For me though the interesting part came not from him but from another member of the audience, a Raelist and it wasn't anything to do with his religion it was to do with a number of decidedly dodgy linguistic claims he made. First of all he claimed that the word "religion" means "a linking together of people" and that therefore anything that is such a linking is per se a religion.This is an intriguing bit of nonsense for a couple of reasons.
To begin with the origin of the term is obscure. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins suggests that it derives from Latin religio - an obligation or a bond between man and God. Another possibility is a connection with religo - to tie fast. So it might well have a connection with a link between man and God but not between people.
He also claimed the the word "cult" means "any system of religious beliefs". This is just plain wrong. It was originally derived from the Latin past particple of colare - till and is related to the word "cultivate". The "worship" meaning developed later.

Of course, even if these etymologies that he gave were both correct and certain, he would still be committing the etymological fallacy. This is the belief that the "real" meaning of a word is somehow fixed by whatever meaning it had in the earliest form that is traceable. So if, and I stress if, the word "religion" were derived from a word meaning "link" then that is the meaning it must have now. This is self evident nonsense. Words change their meanings all the time. To insist that a word should have a meaning it had a thousand years ago, and possibly in another language, is ridiculous. What kind of communication could there be if I insisted that "acid" meant "pointed, sharp", "brothel" meant "deteriorate" or "cheap" meant "innkeeper"?
All these are given as possible origins in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, though I confess that my linguistic prowess is not up to the research to get a more detailed handle on it. If you are interested in quite detailed word origins may I suggest subscribing to Bradshaw of the Future which has some very good discussions of miscellaneous words on it.

Meanwhile, I'd like to suggest that people trying to justify their odd beliefs should stop appealing to etymology to back them up.