Etymology and Alternate Names
Old Russian sources mentioned the region as жемотьская земля, samotska sem(b)la; this gave rise to its Polish form, Żmudź, and probably to the Middle High German Sameiten, Samaythen. In Latin texts we can usually meet the name written as Samogitia, Samogetia etc. The region is also known in English as Lower Lithuania, Žemaitija, or, in reference to its Yiddish name, Zamet.
Read more about this topic: Samogitia
Famous quotes containing the words etymology, alternate and/or names:
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)