An etymological dictionary is the natural resource for handling this
sort of question. American dictionaries tend to be weak in this
aspect, and fortunately, THE English dictionary is strong.

New Century is one of the stronger American references, and
Oxford English dictionary is the English benchmark.
For convenience, I looked the vessels up in Concise Oxford English
dictionary (COD for short) because I am comfortable with it.

Brian Whatcott Altus OK

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:10:06 +0200 (CEST), Nomen Nescio
] wrote:

Brian Whatcott wrote:

Can anyone point me to websites that discuss the origins
of sailing vessel names?

Specifically, I am looking for the origins of terms such
as Sloop, Ketch, Schooner, Yawl, Bark, Frigate, Clipper,
and actual sailing vessel names, and NOT nautical terms.


Ketch from middle English, fishing boat
Sloop from Dutch sloep (ancient origin)
Schooner Unknown origin
Yawl - Low German jolle, Dutch jol (ancient origin)
Bark also Barque Italian barca through Provencal,
French, English "ship's boat"

Frigate Italian fregata, French fregate (ancient origin)
Clipper raked bows and masts compared to clipper (scissor)


As you can see, the question is comparable with
"What happened before the Big-Bang?"
in that most boat names predate all modern languages.

Mr. Whatcott:

May I inquire as to WHERE you found these references?

I need to be able to document them so they can be found
by anyone else looking for the same information, mucht the
same way an academic research paper is documented. Just me
saying "I heard it from someone on Usenet" isn't going to
pass muster...

I would really appreciate your sources for this information

Thanks!

---
-
Those who complain about others not being "team players"
are the same ones who never give up the ball.
-----