Talk:Farley (name)

Bogus English derivation

I have again removed the bogus derivation of Middle English fairleah. It makes no sense. First, -leah is a common toponymic article, as seen in all of the various -ley and -legh place names, but it doesn't mean 'wood' - it is a meddow/field. It seems to be defined here as wood solely for the purpose of linking it to Latin. Second, if fairleah means 'beautiful wood' [sic] as claimed, then it does not derive from Old English fearnlæs meaning 'fern wood' [sic]. It is not like the Old English element fearn- developed a new meaning on Middle English to be 'beautiful'. Etymology is not done by just picking a vaguely similar looking word in an earlier language that means something different. If it actually derives from Old English fearnlæs then the Middle English version is just a corruption of that term, and assigning a meaning to it in Middle English misses the point. Finally there is the claimed derivation from Latin - Old English did not derive from Latin. While word borrowing can occur, this is not the case when an Old English term is made up of two Old English words. Yes, there might be cognates in the two languages, due to their shared origin in [proto-]Indo-European, but that is not the same thing as the Old English word deriving fromt he Latin. Worse, it is highly unlikely that the same proto-Indo-European would come to mean 'oak' in Latin, and 'fern' in Old English. Again, etymology doesn't work by just picking superficially similar words and declare one to derive from the other. It is unnecessary to trace the origin to the older languages, even were it accurate, while the correct definition of -leah has been given. Agricolae (talk) 06:19, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As a follow-up, I see that the page that apparently serves as the basis for Old English/Middle English connection isn't actually saying that it means the Modern English 'fern', but rather that it represents the Old English collective adjective 'fern' (which means something different entirely than the Modern English, but related to the Middle English 'fair'; it does not mean 'oak' in either).

Enough already with the absurd etymology. Old English does not derive from Latin. Agricolae (talk) 04:35, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple origins

The surname has multiple independent origins. The article itself lists two of them. Thus there is no reason whatsoever not to actually state that this is the case. Likewise, the source we cite for the toponymic explicitly arttributes ti to multiple locations, but againt he IP editor seems intent on downplaying this for no apparen reason. Please explain. Agricolae (talk) 22:03, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]