Etymology Atlas

Etymology Atlas is a free interactive world map of word origins. Search an English word such as water, fire or eye and see how it is said in over a thousand languages, plotted where each language is spoken, grouped by language family and linked to the ancestral roots it descends from.

What you can explore

• Translations on a map — modern, historical and reconstructed forms of the same concept, placed by country and language.
• Cognates and language families — words that share a common ancestor are connected, from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Austronesian.
• A timeline — filter by attestation date to see which forms existed in antiquity, the Middle Ages or today.
• Phonetic alignment — compare related words sound by sound.

Where the data comes from

Peer-reviewed comparative datasets (IE-CoR, ABVD, UraLex, ASJP and other CLDF collections), Wiktionary, Wikipedia and Apertium dictionaries, each credited on the databases page.

Popular words

water fire eye sun moon dog blood bone nose tooth ear head hand foot mouth tongue night day star stone tree leaf fish bird snake egg man woman rain cloud smoke ash salt horn tail hair heart drink eat sleep