@Karaeng Matoaya

There are various interesting thought threads converging here.

• Possible KO ↔ JA cognacy in the word for "bear".

That said, see also Talk:곰#Etymology, which raises the possibility that this is an areal word possibly also cognate with Old Chinese.

• The Japanese article for the Baekje capital city at w:ja:熊津 mentions Japanese sources recording the name as Kumanari, or Komunari, and Baekje sources listing this as 固麻那羅, rendered in kana as コマナル (Komanaru) and in hangul as 고마나루.

The koma angle caught my eye. Japanese has an old word Koma that appears in ancient texts as a term meaning "Korea, Korean", more specifically referring to Goguryeo or immigrants to Japan from there. The derivation of this Koma word is lost, as far as I can see in Japanese sources, and I find myself wondering if this is related to this placename. However, the Old Japanese name for the Baekje kingdom and people is Kudara, which origins are similarly obscure, and likely lie in non-Japanese texts...

• The Japanese WP article also mentions that the Baekje capital is located on the 熊川, read in Japanese as Kuma-gawa, and nowadays named the 錦江 or the Geum River.

I don't suppose you've read anything about the name of the river, and any chance that the modern Geum might derive in any way from the older Middle Korean or Baekje place name? Granted, the hanja are totally different, but perhaps the newer 錦 spelling was chosen due to a phonetic similarity to the older 熊?

• The river makes a sharp bend as it goes through the city location: https://www.google.com/maps?q=%E5%BF%A0%E6%B8%85%E5%8D%97%E9%81%93%E5%85%AC%E5%B7%9E

This leads me to wonder if the Old Korean / Baekje might have been engaging in some wordplay in connection the Japanese word 隈 (kuma, “sharp bend”) (with another sense of "hole, deep recess" as discussed elsewhere). This may pre-suppose a connection with the modern Korean verb stem 굽— (gup-, “to be bent, to be curved”), and / or with Old Korean *kwùmùk (where presumably the final /-k/ is a locative marker?). There is a persistent /b/ ↔ /m/ alternation that happens in various places in Japonic, and I wonder if this might have occurred in ancient times as well -- if memory serves, some authors have suggested that Baekje may have been linguistically closer to Yamato (Old Japanese) than Silla was.

Curious as to your thoughts. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Re-reading this and the JA WP article, I'm puzzled by the given reading there -- I'd expect 固麻那羅 to be read as koma nara from a Japanese standpoint, suggesting instead that the latter term might be related instead to 나라 (nara) and possibly even the name of the Japanese city Nara / 奈良. Indeed, given the reconstructed Middle and Old Chinese phonetic values for 那 and 羅 / 罗 (luó), I'd expect the Baekje reading of the latter half to be somewhat similar to 나라 (nara).

Incidentally, if you're up for it, I'd appreciate it if you could update w:Nara_(city)#Etymology -- that currently incorrectly states that there is no textual Old Korean evidence for the precursor of modern Korean 나라 (nara), but I see that you've added Old Korean 國惡, which would seem to refute that.

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Eirikr, these are very interesting ideas to consider.

Gongju (公州) and Geum-gang (錦江) are both phonogramic Sino-Korean writings of 곰~고마. We know this because Gongju was written as 熊州 until 940, when the written name was changed to 公州 as part of a dynastic transition. Similarly, 錦江 was also referred to as 熊津江 onto the fifteenth century.

The wordplay suggestion for the etymology is quite intriguing. There's a folktale in modern Gongju about how the river and place is named after a she-bear that kidnapped a human man that she had fallen in love with, then drowned herself in the river when the man managed to escape. Obviously this could be a later folk etymology.

There are also similarly sounding words 검 (geom, “god”) (probably borrowed from *kamuy), and 君(きみ) (kimi) (cf. the second element in 임금 (imgeum)): so perhaps this place was intended to evoke "Bear's Ford", "God's Ford", and "Lord's Ford" at once.

The most likely candidate for the second element (given extensive logographic evidence of 津) remains ᄂᆞᄅᆞ (ford, “nolo”), which—if Baekje had the same vocalism as the eighth-century Silla elite when they adopted what would evolve into modern Sino-Korean, which doesn't seem super likely—would be */nəLə/. The usual reconstructions for Proto-Korean appear to involve a bizarre amount of schwas, however (because all aspirates and consonant clusters appear to come from schwa dropping between consonants). The schwas were probably weakened forms of fuller vowels so perhaps Baekje had */naLa/ instead.

Another potential source is 나맇 (narih, “stream”), both because of the Japanese nari transcriptions and because the town itself (and not just the stream) was also sometimes written 熊川. And 나랗 (nalah, “country”) is also possible, as you suggested.

As an aside, it's quite fascinating that all three words are attested in Middle Korean with the apparent *-k place suffix: the connective form of ᄂᆞᄅᆞ is ᄂᆞᆯㅇ (nolG-).--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 23:02, 3 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Karaeng Matoaya: Hmm, hmm, very interesting, thank you!

Thinking further about the latter half of the place name, from a Japanese standpoint, kumanoro sounds like 熊・隈のろ (kuma no ro), where kuma is either 熊 (“bear”) or 隈 (“sharp bend”), no is the possessive / genitive particle の (no), and ro is ... uncertain. There is no sensible Japanese term that fits for that -- we have various Japonic words ro, but with senses like "boat oar" or "a certain kind of woven lace". The Japanese word for "river ford" is 浅瀬 (asase), literally asa "shallow" + se "narrows (in a body of water), strait". The closest possible morpheme in terms of phonetics and semantics both is a suffix -ro that seems to denote a "place" or "location", often with hints of "interior, inside", but this never appears independently, only as a suffix.

If we instead take noro as a single piece, there is the Japanese noun 鈍 (noro, “slowness in action or thought”). This more commonly refers to "stupidity", but it could also refer to "slow-flowing". That said, the oldest attestation I can find is for the Classical Japanese adjective form 鈍し (noroshi) in the early 1300s, far too young for this.

However, given the variation in the vowel values in the Chinese-character spellings and other records, I am uncertain if Middle Korean ᄂᆞᄅᆞ (nolo) might represent a form of this term after a vowel change has already happened?

(Also, apologies for the flood of pings -- I am fascinated by the additional information you're adding to various entries, and ideas are bubbling.)

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:45, 3 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

• @Tibidibi -- Belated additional idea about the -nolo portion.

In Japanese, we have 乗る (noru, “to ride; to be or get on top of something”). This might be related to the idea of a "ford" from the sense of "going across on top of the water". This verb appears in certain compounds with the idea of "getting over or across something".

I note in Korean, we have 놓다 (nota, “to lay or put something”), presumably "on top of" something else.

That final -h is problematic, but I see what looks like the same -h over in verb pair 나다 (nada, intransitive / mediopassive) and 낳다 (nata, transitive / causative). I wonder if the -h here is a suffixing element, suggesting the past existence of a verb 노다 (noda)?

If so, this would seem to mirror Japanese: Japanese 乗る (noru, “to ride or get on top”, intransitive / mediopassive) + 乗す (nosu, “to put or lay on top”, transitive / causative), as well as 生る (naru, “to be born”, intransitive / mediopassive) + 生す (nasu, “to bear, to give birth to”, transitive / causative).

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

ᄂᆞᄅᆞ (nolo) is purely based on Korean verb 나ᄅᆞ다 (nalota, modern 나르다 (nareuda)), which has verb stem nolG-. It doesn't have any room for Japanese origin.--荒巻モロゾフ (talk) 07:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

To clarify, I wasn't seeking a Japanese origin for the Koreanic morpheme, but instead exploring the possibility of sound correspondences that might point towards cognacy. The first half appears to have cognates in both Korean and Japanese, and I was curious if the latter half might as well. It seems that the first half might instead be an areal Wanderwort perhaps from Old Chinese, making that more of a shared borrowing from a third source rather than a true cognate, and as you note the underlying phonology of the latter half could well rule out any likely Japanese cognates. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:45, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply