Two pairs of doublets in English

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]The Old English word for name was nama, and the Latin word for name was nomen.

[00:00:04]If you think these sound similar, you might feel validated to know that they are indeed cognates, but they still both exist together in the English language.

[00:00:10]That's because Latin nomen is where we get the word noun from. So, name and noun are doublets, two words in the same language which come from the same root, but don't mean the same thing. A good parallel example is Old English word and Latin verbum, which come to be modern English word and verb.