A book review of The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between Volume II by Patrick Foote
Stars: ****
Mango Publishing (2021)
Language
192 pages
Disclosure: I received this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.
Summary: The best-selling book is back in it’s second volume with more names, more words, and even more in-between than before!
What’s in a name? The answer is far more complex and interesting than you may think. From the person behind the popular Youtube channel, NameExplain, comes the second volume of his best-selling book The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between. This new book is a fun, interesting and educational journey through the world of etymology. It covers a huge array of names from a variety of topic areas, and includes a bunch of random facts behind the names. From first names, to bodies of water―there’s no name big or small, important or obscure that won’t be explained.
Find fun facts. Presented in a light and entertaining manner, The Origin of Names compels you to learn a ton of things you didn’t know you wanted to know. Unlike a dictionary, everything in this book is easy to understand and can be read from start to finish, or in short bursts. It’s also a lot more fun to read―Patrick explains each name with jokes and quips you’re bound to enjoy, and it’s full of pictures too! Be the know-it-all you always wanted to be.
The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between Volume II
If you love language but don’t like stuffy, highly intellectual books on language, this may be more your style. Of course if you do like those kinds of language books, that’s okay too. So do I.
The author of the book has a YouTube channel devoted to word origins. If you are more of a auditory learner, you may prefer his channel. However if you prefer to read your information, this book (and book 1) is a perfect beginner’s guide to word origins. This isn’t a treatise on how word origins work or anything like that. This is just simple explanations of the origins of specific words.
This volume has the subjects of first names, historic places, bodies of water, plants, trees, buildings, occupations, websites, bands, drinks, colours, body parts, elements, adjectives and last names. The elements section was really interesting to my daughter who knows the names of almost all the elements of the period table. I found the first and last names sections really interesting. The colours section talked about the colour orange which I’ve posted about on my other blog. But it was nice to read about a few other colours.
The book, under websites, lists the way Amazon got it’s name. I already learned about this in this book about Amazon. But I didn’t know the history behind the other ones.
This is a fun, lighthearted book. It’s perfect for a bathroom book as each section is short.
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