When folk etymologise

[muckefuck]

If you set your language preference here on "Gaeilge" (come, do it for a lark!), you'll notice that "Journal" is translated with "Dialann". This looks like a straightforward combination of dia, an archaic word for "day", and -lann, a common noun-forming suffix with the general meaning of "place". (Cf. leabhar "book" > leabharlann "library"; clár "board; register" > clárlann "registry", etc.) But of course, anyone who works with words knows how deceitful appearances can be. Here's a fascinating explanation of how it came about, courtesy of donncha22:

The word dialann actually had a pretty dodgy start in the world. It was orignially dia-lón and meant "a day's ration". Actually, it was Risteard Pluincéad[*] who invented the word as a translation of the Latin term diarium which has that meaning, esp. in the plural diaria. Anyway, later dictionary makers mistook the meaning, since diarium can mean "daily journal" as well as "daily allowance", and they passed the word along as dialon and then dialann. The latter form almost certainly arose because lann can mean "place", thus "day-place", which seemed to fit reasonably well with "diary".

The more orthodox term for "diary", Dennis points out, would be cín lae which translates as "book of days" (cín being an archaic word for "book"). The Journal of the Proceedings of Dáil Éireann (the Irish parliament), for instance, has the Irish title Cín lae imeachtaí Dháil Éireann.

Today I stumbled across another story of translingual bumbling, albeit without the same moral regarding caution in the use of dictionaries. Wondering about the origins of the surname "Hurley", I looked it up in Woulfe. As is often the case, he gives a couple of Irish equivalents, including Ó hUrthuile, Ó hIarfhlatha (also anglicised "O'Herlihy", etc.), and Ó Comáin. Come again?

Here's how it goes: Ó hUrthuile is commonly anglicised as "Hurley" which--by sheer coincidence--happens to sound like the English name of the stick used in the Irish sport of hurling (transparently derived from the verb hurl). In Irish, this stick is known by the term camán, which is a diminutive of cam meaning "crooked". Another form of this same diminutive, Comán, was apparently used as a personal name in southwest Ireland, since if gives rise to the surname Ó Comáin "descendant of Comán". So far so good--until someone makes the connection between Comán and camán[**], someone who knows that the English for a camán is "hurley" and so "translates" the name.

[*] author of a 17th-century dictionary of Latin and Irish
[**] In Munster dialect (where stress is shifted to the long vowel), both variants are pronounced [kə'mˠɑ:nʲ].