Talk:Mark (given name)

Latest comment: 4 years ago by Largoplazo in topic Origin

I've re-removed the link to "Safety Not Guaranteed", as per the discussion on Talk:Mark, which was the original source of this page. -Colin Kimbrell 19:31, 21 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Meaning of Mark, hammer

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I recall that Marcus, is also a noun, meaning hammer in Latin. ANYONE??Coal town guy (talk) 18:04, 5 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Origin

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In response to the IP user who removed the etymology on the grounds that "no one who knows enough Latin to know the claim is nonsensical? All references to "Mart-kos" come back to this page, and it's in contradiction of the actual citations at Marcus":

  • Most people who speak English aren't experts on English etymology all the way back to Old English in the middle of the first millennium CE. So I'm guessing it's reasonable to suggest that you may "know enough Latin", i.e., Classical Latin, but have you traced the etymologies of words from Classical Latin to earlier times? Do you know Old Latin? It's possible that the attribution of *mart-kos even to Old Latin may be incorrect, as far as I know; maybe it should say PIE. But, anyway, to continue:
  • Nothing at Marcus (praenomen) (you can't mean Marcus, that's just a disambiguation page) contradicts the language that was here. That article says the name is related to "Mars". That's what this article said.
  • The stem of Mars as Mart-", as in "Marte," and "Martis". This is uncontroversial.
  • The Latin suffix -(i)cus is cognate with Greek -(ι)κός and reconstructed in PIE as *-kos. These are all comparable to their English cognate "-ic". Based on that *mart-kos wouldn't necessary mean consecrated to Mars, but can reasonably be expected to mean "related to Mars". See wikt:-cus#Latin, wikt:-icus#Latin.

For the reasons I've given above, the claim in the article is, on the face of it, credible and reasonable, and your edit summary didn't give a valid basis for disbelieving the claim. On the other hand, it hasn't been sourced, so, while I'm restoring it, I'm also adding a {{citation needed}} tag. Largoplazo (talk) 02:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply