Prompted by watching Wolf Hall on the BBC (Henry VIII, etc) I suddenly twigged – after 50 years! – that the origin of ‘protestant’ is … wait for it … protest. Can’t believe it. How could I not join those dots up:
50 years already! :smack:
I had another awakening earlier in the week as well but … that’ll come back to me.
Have you got anything?
p.s. thanks Annie-Xmas for the thread title inspiration
Czar and Caesar
And Kaiser.
And the first part of the name of the Spanish city of Zaragoza (derived from Caesar Augusta).
Atone feels like it should be derived from some old Latin word or other, but incredibly it’s just a fusion of the plain English words “at” and “one”!
(It used to mean something closer to “agree” – that is, to be “at one” with someone or something – rather than “seek forgiveness through ameliorative action”).
And Jersey (Caesaria)…and therefore, New Jersey.
Painstaking = “pains-taking,” not “pain-staking”
“Misled” (mis + led, i.e., led astray), which for years I thought was pronounced “mi-zld” and was closer to “cheated” than “deceived.”
Mediterranean = (the sea at the) Middle of the World; similar to Romans referring to it as “Our Sea” Mare Nostrum.
Mesopotamia = Between Two Rivers*
I tossed around these words but didn’t break them down until after college…
*as opposed to Mesoacrostichum = Between Two Ferns 
Yeah, this sort of thing happens to me a lot, and I usually forget it pretty quickly. Let’s see… I remember suddenly realizing that they’re called “crackers” because they crack… and that a “sucker” is a person who has no more knowledge of the world than a not-yet-weaned baby… and there were certain words that I had never quite bothered to realize are another common word with a prefix, like re-move and mis-take. (The latter occurred to me only when I heard a German pronounce the word with the accent on the first syllable.)
I also seem to have trouble recognizing “baby talk” etymology. It was quite awhile before I figured out that “tummy” is literally the word “stomach” in baby talk, and I never realized until recently that the word “sissy” means “sister”.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the frozen potato brand Ore-Ida is short for Oregon and Idaho.
:smack:
In English we say ‘concrete’ when we mean cement mixed with gravel. It occurred to me that concrētum in Latin would mean ‘with chalk’. Interesting. I looked it up and it turns out I was quite wrong. Concrētum comes from concrēscere, to grow together, i.e., congeal.
When I was learning Italian, I thought the word for lawyer, avvocato, was such a weird word. I immediately thought of the fruit, avocado. I was talking to my cousin, a lawyer, saying what a weird word Italians have for lawyer. Of course, he knew it meant an advocate.
“Pizza” and “Pita” are basically the same word, describing basically the same thing - a round piece of flat bread.
I remember being interested to learn that the Romans called their head god Jupiter as a derivation of “Zeus Pater” (via “Deus Pater”)…father Zeus. Those Romans weren’t shy about taking the best from ancient and classical Greek culture.
Before
After
Be Fore
Aft er
Fore, Aft. How nautical.
I think you just won the Internet for this period.
And Shah for that matter (and Checkmate)
Well, not quite on topic, I was going to post that the title Shah is also derived from Caesar, but, on checking it doesn’t. So the “obvious” etymology is wrong 
Simulpost with Novelty Bobble. Sorry about that