• huf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    16 hours ago

    i hope this becomes an ironclad tradition if you’re black and want to be in the government, your first name has to be a word in a uralic language.

    i mean, it’s only happened twice, but it has happened twice.

    barack = apricot/peach in hungarian
    and now this kamala stuff in finnish.

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    Apparently Finnish kamala is speculated to be related to Russian komólyj (“hornless”) via Proto-Indo-European *ḱom-olo-s (also “hornless”). This PIE term became Proto-Germanic *hamalaz, with the meaning shifting from “hornless” to “mutilated”, and then this Germanic term was loaned into Proto-Finnic as *kamala, with the meaning shifting in the direction of “bad” or “terrible”.

    …Unsurprisingly, completely unrelated to the given name Kamala, which is instead of Dravidian origin via Sanskrit, and means “lotus”.