Etymology - 1

All words have origins, but some moreso than others.

In "History - 1" I discussed how some old words grew into new ones (such as "rilo" into la), but here (and in future installments) I will talk about where the words actually come from.

Elessic is designed as a predecessor (but not direct ancestor) of Easterling (the fantastical language which is presented as English). In some few cases, I have decided that Easterling derived a word or phrase from (at least in part) from Elessic. This mainly occurs when I find the English form to be the most fitting or attractive (it also occurs with some other languages as the source, too).

For example, geyt is a cognate to "gate," and means "gate." Less directly, kisa, means "kiss" (kisand being the Verb), which is derived from the Japanese "kisu," which comes from the English "kiss." ar means "magic" and comes from "arcana,"

Other sources are more roundabout or symbolic.

 ĉel (the philosophical concept of "Good") comes from Chell, the protagonist of the Portal series. See, there's no direct meaning of symbolism there, just a source for the sounds I used.

 ĉelwen ("Turtle") is derived from  ĉel + wen ("Lord/Lady, Noble"). This auspicious meaning and their association with good luck in Elven culture is derived from the use of the Turtle as a protective symbol in some of Stephen King's books.

 enor ("Raven") comes from "Lenore," whom Poe references in The Raven.

 Here's a suuuper weird one: war ("Wolf") comes from a wolf-like monster I designed in my early writings called a "warick." This came from Warrick Brown, the character on CSI, which I watched a lot in early high school.

 kwenya ("Song") comes from Quenya, Tolkien's primary Elvish language.

 dava ("Elf") came about very deliberately as I was trying to pick the form for such a very important word. I was researching Elves in other cultures to find inspiration, but came up sort of empty. I decided to branch out into other folkloric and mythological topics, and came across the Sanskrit word "deva," which I found I rather liked. Further, a Deva is a creature that is more than human, but less than a god (though, I daresay that might not be the case in all religions which recognize them). I went with dava, which I found more attractive.

Later, it came about that dava could be seen as the Actor Form of a verb, and I made this verb, dand mean "to exist." In-world etymologically, I think that long ago, a group of powerful Elven philosophers discussed the idea of solipsism, and when trying to answer the question "What can we say truly exists?" they could only answer "Ourselves." Therefore, an Elf is one who exists.

 I will definitely be doing more of these in the future.