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The Hausa term boko, used in the name Boko Haram, is commonly asserted, by journalists and political commentators as well as by academic linguists, to be derived from the English word "book". This turns out to be false. Boko is not an English loanword. A careful analysis of Hausa phonology and morphology shows clearly that boko could not have come from English "book". Rather, boko is an indigenous Hausa word originally connoting sham, fraud, deceit, or lack of authenticity. When the British colonial government imposed secular schools in northern Nigeria at the beginning of the 20th century, boko was applied in a pejorative sense to this new system. By semantic extension, boko came to acquire its current meaning of Hausa written in Roman script and Western education in general.

We present a review of the etymology of zoological taxonomic names with emphasis on the most unusual examples. The names were divided into several categories, starting from the most common – given after morphological features – through inspiration from mythology, legends, and classic literature but also from fictional and nonfictional pop-culture characters (e.g., music, movies or cartoons), science, and politics. A separate category includes zoological names created using word-play and figures of speech such as tautonyms, acronyms, anagrams, and palindromes. Our intention was to give an overview of possibilities of how and where taxonomists can find the inspirations that will be consistent with the ICZN rules and generate more detail afterthought about the naming process itself, the meaningful character of naming, as well as the recognition and understanding of names.

We present a review of the etymology of zoological taxonomic names with emphasis on the most unusual examples. The names were divided into several categories, starting from the most common – given after morphological features – through inspiration from mythology, legends, and classic literature but also from fictional and nonfictional pop-culture characters (e.g., music, movies or cartoons), science, and politics. A separate category includes zoological names created using word-play and figures of speech such as tautonyms, acronyms, anagrams, and palindromes. Our intention was to give an overview of possibilities of how and where taxonomists can find the inspirations that will be consistent with the ICZN rules and generate more detail afterthought about the naming process itself, the meaningful character of naming, as well as the recognition and understanding of names.

Halfway into White Noise, Don DeLillo's novel from 1985, Jack Gladney packs his family in the car and leaves town running from a black chemical cloud. The "airborne toxic event" had triggered an emergency evacuation plan: floodlights from helicopters, sirens, unmarked cars from obscure agencies, clogged roads, makeshift shelters at a Boy Scout camp where the Red Cross would dispense juice and coffee. People are confused, they seek information wherever they can, "[s]mall crowds collected around certain men." Among generalized bewilderment, Gladney observes a few individuals moving faster and more assertively than the rest, then getting into a Land Rover. In the chaotic scene of crisis, their confidence gets his attention. "Their bumper stickers read GUN CONTROL IS MIND CONTROL" Gladney reads. And his mind wanders: "In situations like this, you want to stick close to people in right-wing fringe groups. They've practiced staying alive."

Language does not simply symbolize a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possible the existence or the appearance of that situation or object for it is a part of the mechanism whereby that situation or object is created. (Mead 1934, p. 78)

This paper explores the relationship between etymology, genealogy and the literary exploration of the past in early South Asia. By means of a close reading of a range of materials drawn from the Atharvaveda, Brahmanas and Upanisads, as well as the Nirukta, the Brhaddevata and the Mahabharata, I will demonstrate that there is a progression from etymology, to expanded etymology, by which I refer to narratives spun from the details of etymologies, to full accounts of birth and descent, that is to say, genealogy, and, from there, to larger-scale historical accounts. I will thus show that etymology played an important part in the formation of consensus understandings of the past in early South Asia.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the Ukrainian nominations due to the internal form of the word. The names of literary language and vernacular on the basis of ethnolinguistic phenomena – folk etymology and taboos are involved in the analysis. The relevence of the study is due to the need to clarify ethnolinguistic phenomena associated with ambivalent tendencies – the vivid imagery of the word and its concealment and reproduction in linguistic concepts. Research methods. In the article as the main general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis are used, as well as linguistic – descriptive, structural and comparative and historical methods. Conclusions. For ethnolinguistics the phenomenon of folk etymology is important, which testifies the desire of speakers to explain the name, illustrates the subconscious attempt of native speakers to poetize the word, to inspire the word with poetry. In folk speech etymology motivates primarily toponyms and nicknames of people. Under the influence of folk etymology the literary language and folk words change their sound composition. Ethnolinguistic character has such a phenomenon as taboo: the word "hides" the internal form. During the Christmas holidays the speakers of the Bukovinian dialects had a taboo on the pronunciation of the word poppy. Taboo was widely used in folk birth rites. Euphemisms are associated with the phenomenon of taboos. In vernacular the word "devil" has many "substitutes". Periphrases are close to euphemisms. In literary language there are established periphrases which emphasize the feature of the concept.