Ever Wonder Who Names Stuff? Who Makes Up Words Or Coins A Phrase? What If It Were You? Would That Make You The Coolest?

Names of things are supposed to have meaning. Aren't they? Think about it. We don't get to name many things in our lives...unless we have 7 kids or own our own business or create a product. Not everyone is in a position to do any or all of that.
Better yet, how about coining a phrase? That would be even rarer! Why couldn't I have been the one to come up with the idea that a stitch in time saves nine or to not sweat the small stuff? Do we all have to be Ben Franklin or Mark Twain in order to have something we said enter into the lexicon of modern culture? Right. This is beginning to depress me.

My being a writer (jury is still out with hotel rooms reserved indefinitely) or blogger or whatever gives me the opportunity to create and name my posts. I can also coin a phrase off the top of my head but there is no guarantee (nor likelihood) anything I come up with will enter the lexicon of Americana nor the English language dictionary. But I am talking about the simple stuff too.

Where did the word sprinkle come from? OK. It supposedly came from an archaic Dutch word sprenkelen. Where did that word come from? What Dutch guy with his finger jammed in some seawall or something noticed water trickling past his fleshy plug and shouted "DAS WASSER IST SPRENKELEN"?

That's what I want to do! From the moment sprenkelen left his imaginary lips (in my little fiction) it made it's way west and became sprenklen. It crossed the channel and was anglicized in Old English as sprengen which was modernized as sprinkle. You gotta love it. BUT you gotta ask, who changed and/or adapted it across the ages? Was it a scholarly person or some monk in an abbey? I doubt it. Here's how I see it.

The changes were caused by lousy listening skills and even worse understanding of letters. I am convinced a comedy of errors gave us sprinkle. If you could pronounce the Dutch word at all, there is no guarantee you knew how to write much less spell. What if a German happened by that proverbial wall and heard the Dutchman shouting about something that sounded like sprenklen. It almost sounds German so you carry it back with you, however you don't know how to form letters either. A Briton hears you tell the tale in a gasthaus near Cologne and thinks you said sprengen. Once back in England he tells the local abbot who passes the word to a scribe who adds the word with a flourish of illumination that is difficult to read even if you could. A modern literary scholar comes upon the manuscript and, due to complex illumination decodes the word as sprinkle. And there you have it.
Remember the game where you whisper a phrase in your friend's ear and they pass it on? The next does the same until it gets back to the person who originated it. By the time it returns to the start it bears no resemblance to what began the circuit. That is most likely the journey from sprenkelen to sprinkle, at least in my humble opinion.

No matter how it happens I wold love to be the guy to coin a phrase or create a word to make even the urban dictionary. As someone said before I could come up with anything as good, "Fame is fleeting."
This isn't about fame. It's about FOREVER!