There is a table of examples in the link. Some I saw include:

Desert

  • desert Latin dēserō (“to abandon”) << ultimately PIE **seh₁- (“to sow”)
  • Ancient Egyptian: Deshret (refers to the land not flooded by the Nile)  from dšr (red)

Shark

  • shark Middle English shark from uncertain origin
  • Chinese 鲨 (shā)  Named as its crude skin similar to sand (沙 (shā))

Kayak

  • Inuktitut ᖃᔭᖅ (kayak) Proto-Eskimo *qyaq
  • Turkish kayık (‘small boat’)[17] Old Turkic kayguk << Proto-Turkic kay- (“to slide, to turn”)

A lot of these could be TIL posts of their own.

I also wonder if some of these are actually false cognates, or if there is a much earlier common origin with false associations that came afterwards

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    311 days ago

    Ass as in donkey and ass as in butt have different etymologies. The donkey one likely comes from Latin asinus and the butt one is from dropping the r in arse, which comes from the PIE root *ors- meaning butt/backside