[lordelph]

Very interesting tool! My Yorkshire grandfather would often say "kirk" instead of "church", which I always thought was more of a Scottish word. Doing a place name comparison of those words shows a fairly clear division of north and south - https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6ImtpcmsiLCJjb2x...

[9dev]

…which ties neatly in the German word for church, which is Kirche (the ”ch“ is phonetically similar to ”k“). How did I never notice that?

[eigenket]

In the UK the word comes from Norse, via the Viking Invasion not directly from anything Germanic (other than that Germanic and Norse share some stuff).

[0xdada]

I wouldn't be surprised if that's also via Scandinavian influence (kyrke). Some other examples are bra, barn, hus.

[bonki]

In which universe are German k and ch phonetically similar?

[vesinisa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place...

According to this "kirk" is Old Norse (i.e. Viking) in origin. It's the same Germanic root as modern English church.

[vidarh]

Kirke in modern Norwegian.

Scottish include quite a few other Norse forms. E.g. "bairn" (child), vs "barn" in Norwegian.

[arethuza]

Interestingly enough when I was growing up in a small Scottish village (~1000 people) it was the Church of Scotland that was referred to as the "kirk" - the other 5 or so "churches" weren't referred to as kirks.