Why are Latin and Greek words still heavily used everywhere? Like university frats and sororities, latin honors, and Biological terms? Why would they not use the English equivalent words instead for these words specifically?

Question

Why are Latin and Greek words still heavily used everywhere? Like university frats and sororities, latin honors, and Biological terms? Why would they not use the English equivalent words instead for these words specifically?

In: 36

Answer 1

Latin and Greek used to be the languages of academia.

Similarly to how nowadays everyone writing a scientific paper regardless of their origin is likely to write in English, so did people in the past write everything in Latin or Greek.

Latin and Greek were widely taught to everyone who had more than the most rudimentary education.

This meant that using Latin or Greek words instead of normal ones was seen as a sign of class and education.

People gave themselves Latin and Greek names that were the translation of their normal ones. So someone with the German name Gottlieb would call themselves Theophilus or Amadeus for example.

At the same time especially in English which had inherited many Latin originated names from Roman and French invaders people started spelling words not based on how they sound, but in ways that made it clear they had Latin roots. Sometimes they did that for words that didn’t have any.

This has done a number on English orthography and helped make spelling in English as messy as it is today.

Meanwhile everyone who wanted the world to know that they were educated and high class kept using and misusing Latin and Greek words to show off.

At the same time lots of scientific literature accumulated using Latin and Greek words in ways that were different from their literal translation. They were used as labels for very specific concepts with very narrowly defined meaning. Many terms like that were kept around long after Latin and Greek had fallen out of use otherwise because it helps to have clearly defined labels.

In university settings many traditions even very young ones kept using older forms of naming things to capture some reflected glory from actual ancient institutions who had never gotten around to chaining names for things that were actually centuries old.

Using words like that makes you seem like part of the club.