Is there a relationship between the words "night" and "eight"?

Question

I have seen on Facebook, a post (in French) claiming that many words for the night are based on a n+respective number for the number 8. For example on this website,

Language      Number 8  night
français        huit    nuit 
anglais         eight   night 
allemand        acht    nacht
espagnol        ocho    noche 
portugais       oito    noite
italien         otto    notte
néerlandais     acht    nacht
suédois         aetta   natta 
roumain         opt     noapte
wallon          ût      nut 
occitan         uèch    nuèch 
catalan         vuit    nit 
gascon          ueit    nueit 
picard          uit     nuit 
piedmontais     eut     neuit 
espéranto       ok      nokto

The post goes even further, claiming that N is a symbol for infinity, and that 8 is the typical infinity symbol rotated.

My first reaction was to dismiss it. But then, I've been thinking about it, and would really like to have reasons to dismiss it.

The infinity symbol dates from 1655 (according to Wikipedia)whereas the word nuit was already in use by 1170 (website in French). Furthermore, the word nuit was used as noit in older French, and derives from noctum (latin) and thus nox (littré in French). But unfortunately, my knowledge of Latin is by far too limited to investigate further on the Latin.

Actually, the last link mentions that for the author M. Ad. Regnier, studying the Sanskrit, it could be related to the word naked (German: nackt, Latin: nuda).

In English, (the ight deriving from eight sounds worse than some other examples), what I gather is that

Old English niht (West Saxon neaht, Anglian næht, neht) "night, darkness [...] from Proto-Germanic *nahts

which relate as well to nox (Latin), nuks (Old Greek) or naktam (Sanskrit). The same website also indicates that

according to Watkins, probably from a verbal root *neg- "to be dark, be night."

But, if the relation night -> infinity -> infinity symbol -> 8 -> night, sounds improbable, I cannot find definitive information on a possible relation between the number 8 and the night.

Can you help me get down to the bottom of that question?

I am a mathematician and have never seen N used as a symbol for infinity. — Nate Eldredge, Nov 19 '18 at 23:33
Related: [Linguistics.SE question](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/11444/is-there-any-link-between-the-word-eight-and-the-word-night) — Oddthinking, Nov 19 '18 at 23:57
@Oddthinking: The top-voted answer on linguistics.SE explains all – there's not much more to say about the similarity between the two words. However, that answer is unfit for skeptics.SE, because it represents original research. Perhaps this question should be closed, then, because it's essentially unanswerable within the scope of this site? — Schmuddi, Nov 20 '18 at 00:02
To sum up, hypothesis A: in each of these languages the word "Night" was independently derived from word "eight". Even in man-made Esperanto. Oh, and coincidentally in most of the languages where the word for number 8 does not resemble "O(K)T", the word for the dark period of the day bears little similarity to it. Hypothesis B: "night" and "eight" sounded similar in the ancestor of these languages, therefore they sound similar in modern languages. Looks like a job for Occam's razor. — IMil, Nov 20 '18 at 02:50
@NateEldredge I am only a physicist (at least from major study) and neither have I. I have to admit that I did not push much in that direction, since that was the least credible part. — clem steredenn, Nov 20 '18 at 05:53
@Schmuddi I considered asking on Linguistics directly, but seeing that this is a case of seriously doubting a viral post on social media, skeptics seemed appropriate. — clem steredenn, Nov 20 '18 at 05:54
@Oddthinking thanks, google failed me on that one. Though I was specifically looking for the etymology of night... — clem steredenn, Nov 20 '18 at 05:57
@NateEldredge: well, there's ℕ, and those weird set-based definitions of natural numbers where a number is also a set of that cardinality and "less than" and "subset" coincide… but I'm pretty confident that this usage of N is not as old as the concept of "night". — Ulrich Schwarz, Nov 20 '18 at 06:46
Regarding the nonsense *The post goes even further, claiming that N is a symbol for infinity, and that 8 is the typical infinity number turned.* The turned-sideways eight (∞) is a rather recent invention, recent enough that we know exactly who and when: John Wallis in 1655. I do believe people counted to eight and went to bed at night well before 1655. — David Hammen, Nov 20 '18 at 12:09
This question is probably better at our English Language site. — DJClayworth, Nov 20 '18 at 15:01
@NateEldredge N may not mean infinity, but Nth can certainly be used that way. — Michael W., Nov 20 '18 at 16:42
@DavidHammen, yeah, I found that as indicated in the question. At least I pointed the date. This is why I don't put much credibility on that claim. — clem steredenn, Nov 20 '18 at 19:19
@DJClayworth, Linguistics was suggested also. I am not sure about English, as it affects also other languages. Asking about French on English.SE..? — clem steredenn, Nov 20 '18 at 19:20
Doesn't work in any of the Slavic languages I'm familiar with. For example, in Bulgarian, нощ (nosht) means night, but eight is осем (osem). With some variation, that's the case for at least 5 different Slavic languages, including Russian. — ventsyv, Nov 21 '18 at 16:42
Nice question showing that correlation does not imply causation. — NoDataDumpNoContribution, Nov 23 '18 at 11:11
In German some actually write "Gute N8" in short messages or so (good night). Because 8 = "Acht" and Night = "Nacht", so it is N8 = NAcht. The "naked"-correlation is obvious too: Naked = "Nackt" in German, which has obviously a Hamming Distance of 1 to "Nacht". Interesting. — Chris Pillen, Nov 23 '18 at 12:10
@NateEldredge presumably they mean in constructions such as `1..N` or `Nth` — OrangeDog, Nov 23 '18 at 15:16
@Mazura: I have changed the title because I also kept misreading "Night" as a reference to [the book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_(book)). — Nate Eldredge, Nov 24 '18 at 16:32
This was deemed to thin to be an Answer, but: Some of the cited "evidence" is blatantly misleading or false. The list misspells both of the Swedish words to make them look more similar than they are. "Åtta" (number eight) is misspelled as "aetta" and "natt" (night) is misspelled as "natta". "Åtta" /ˈɔtːa/ and "natt" /nat:/ are not very alike if you look at their phonetics, as I'm sure most will agree, and the list seems to have been either poorly researched or intentionally falsified. — Jolta, Dec 04 '18 at 13:57

score 94 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '20 at 09:41

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No, they are unrelated.

Some Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) reconstructions from Wiktionary:

"eight": "oḱtṓw" (claimed to be a dual of "four fingers")
"night": "nókʷts" (possibly from "bare, naked").

As @Schmuddi mentioned in a comment above, it looks just like a coincidence (slightly similar proto-language words). The rest looks like an urban legend.

Sources:

McPherson, Fiona. Indo-European Cognate Dictionary. Wayz Press, 2018. (Google Books link)

Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin, 2000. (Google Books link)

edited Jun 17 '20 at 09:41

Community

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answered Nov 20 '18 at 00:09

bobbib

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[Welcome to Skeptics!](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) Wiktionary doesn't appear to have any references for the comparative analysis that lead to these conclusions. Is there any reason we should accept these reconstructions on Wiktionary over the claims in the original post? – Oddthinking Nov 20 '18 at 00:20
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Hi @Oddthinking! Oh, I'm sorry for that quick-and-dirty answer; it just had a nice comparative list, so I thought it would be helpful. Anyway, we also can edit Wiktionary to add respectable links there :-) – bobbib Nov 20 '18 at 00:49
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We generally don't accept wikis as good references for this reason. I would normally recommend following the links the wiki site gives to get direct references, but that isn't possble here. – Oddthinking Nov 20 '18 at 02:56
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Here's a paper that refers to \*nókʷts as "evening" Martin Joachim Kümmel, "On the lengthened grade in the nominative singular" *Indogermanische Forschungen* Vol. 120, Iss. 1, Pages 279–296, ISSN (Online) 1613-0405, ISSN (Print) 0019-7262, DOI: [https://doi.org/10.1515/if-2015-0014](https://doi.org/10.1515/if-2015-0014). – BurnsBA Nov 20 '18 at 15:20
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@Oddthinking There are several etymological dictionaries of Indo-European languages that confirm that these two reconstructions are the generally accepted ones (with slight variations – I would reconstruct ‘eight’ as _*óḱtōu̯_ with initial stress, for example), but unfortunately none of them are easily available online. Many of them are referenced on the _*nókʷts_ page on Wikipedia, but they exist in paper form only. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 20 '18 at 17:48
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I would not call it a coincidence. Basically you have 2 words in protolanguage that contain a very similar core phoneme cluster, so it is actually rather natural they follow a rather similar evolutionary pattern. The only coincidence is at the root, i.e. the similarity in the proto-language (i.e. a single, isolated case where this occurs). – Eleshar Nov 20 '18 at 22:49
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The online version of the [American Heritage Dictionary](https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/indoeurop.html#IR079100) has both of the roots indicated in this excellent answer, with very slightly variant spelling. – Andrew Lazarus Nov 20 '18 at 23:03
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@JanusBahsJacquet: Feel free to quote from (paper) books you have access to. – Oddthinking Nov 21 '18 at 01:10
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is it worth adding that every language in that list are decended from PIE? – jk. Nov 21 '18 at 09:08
I would accept this as the answer, but I don't think Wikipedia/Wiktionary are valid enough sources for the standards of skeptics.SE... – clem steredenn Nov 23 '18 at 12:15
@Oddthinking: led not lead. And you can read all the books in the world, but it will not help you to prove a negative. The assertion that eight and night are related must be rejected because there is no evidence in favour, not because there is evidence against. – Michael Kay Nov 24 '18 at 19:33
@MichaelKay: both work in that sentence. This answer is making a positive claim, and needs references to support it. – Oddthinking Nov 24 '18 at 22:04
@Oddthinking. I read "x and y are unrelated" here as shorthand for "there is no evidence that x and y are related". That's not a positive claim: you can never prove non-existence. Someone who claims that they are related has the onus of proof. – Michael Kay Nov 25 '18 at 01:17
@MichaelKay: (1) On Skeptics if you claim there is no evidence for something, you need to demonstrate it. If you can't, don't post an answer. (2) This answer is claiming a secondary theory is true. It provides no evidence for this, and despite getting upvotes via the Hot Network Questions link, it will be deleted unless references are added that include evidence to believe the etymologies provided. – Oddthinking Nov 25 '18 at 01:32
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I took the liberty of editing the answer to add references to published, physical PIE etymological dictionaries. I also included links to their Google Books pages for easier searching of the terms. – walen Nov 26 '18 at 12:34
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@LuisG.: Nicely done. I copied some snippets out. – Oddthinking Nov 26 '18 at 16:46
@Eleshar, well, then we can call it a "coincidence" in the Proto-Indo-European language, followed by "convergent evolution" in some (many) of the Western European IE languages :-) – bobbib Dec 15 '18 at 00:05
@Oddthinking since the subject is singular ("analysis") the present tense must be "leads." How do you figure "lead" works in that sentence? – phoog Dec 15 '18 at 03:18
@phoog: this doesn't seem to be worth the effort of defending. – Oddthinking Dec 15 '18 at 09:14

Dmitry Grigoryev · Answer 2 · 2018-11-20T22:17:04.830

In English "eight" and "night" came from different words, "ehte" and "niht" respectively, which have both undergone a common substitution of -gh- for a hard "h", which was a Middle English scribal habit.

In French, "huit" came from "uit" when an "h" was added to avoid confusion with "vit". As for "nuit", it's a transformation of old French "nuict" derived from latin "noctem", which is an inclination of "nox".

The etymological link can be tracked further down, but the two words remain distinct, albeit similar.

So at least for English and French, the similarity between these two words is not due to a common root, but rather to similar ancestor words, and in some cases common transformations which contributed to the similarity of modern forms. I don't know other languages in your list, but they all seem to be either Latin or Germanic, so they likely share their etymological transformation with French and English respectively.

Yep, statistically speaking, that out of [7079 languages](https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size) there should be loads of similarities that are merely coincidental. With such a microscopic and non-independent sample of them as shown in op. This can only be dismissed as *chance*, even if it would be a great and intriguing party conversation. — not2qubit, Nov 26 '18 at 12:33

Chloe · Answer 3 · 2018-12-15T01:32:32.887

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No, night and day come from old Norse.

https://glosbe.com/en/non/night

nátt { noun feminine } The period between sunset and sunrise, when a location faces far away from the sun, thus when the sky is dark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%B3tt

In Norse mythology, Nótt (Old Norse "night"1) is night personified, grandmother of Thor.

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

In Norse mythology, Dagr (Old Norse "day"1) is day personified.

Old Norse blended with early Germanic languages, from which English is derived.

The following photo comes from "Discovering Runes" by Bob Oswald, page 160. You can see an alternative spelling of the rune is dagr, which means day.

I don't know what is wrong with the image upload feature. The image is the correct orientation when I view it in Windows Explorer and also in XnView.

edited Dec 15 '18 at 01:32

answered Nov 22 '18 at 00:06

Chloe

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Your last sentence is either badly worded or just plainly wrong. First, Old Norse is not a particularly old language; Old English is at least 200 years older. Second, both languages are Germanic languages, but belong to different branches (West and North Germanic, respectively). Third, while Old Norse did have an influence on Old English when there were Scandinavian settlers in England during the 9th (and partly 10th) century, it's completely misleading to claim that English is derived in any way from Old Norse. In particular, *night* is of West Germanic origin, and not derived via Old Norse. – Schmuddi Nov 22 '18 at 01:28
OK You could say `night` is a loanword from old Norse, just like the days of the week and compass directions. – Chloe Nov 22 '18 at 04:17
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No, it's just wrong to say that English borrowed *night* from Old Norse. In basically all West Germanic languages (such as English, Dutch and German) as well as North Germanic languages (such as Swedish or Danish) the word has descended from the same prehistoric Germanic root **nakht*. The relation between the Old English word for *night* and the Old Norse one is as best as close as that between you and your niece.The same is also true for *day* and the words for compass directions. Really, please get your facts right – this can easily checked with any etymological dictionary. – Schmuddi Nov 22 '18 at 09:07
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This answer is factually incorrect in pretty much every aspect. _Night_ and _day_ in English are completely separate from their Old Norse forms. They were not borrowed, nor inherited, nor in any other way influenced by the Old Norse forms; they developed quite independently within English. This is quite easily seen from the facts that (a) _night_ retains its ⟨gh⟩ which was written as ⟨ch⟩ (and pronounced!) long after Old Norse, and (b) _day_ was written with ⟨æ⟩ for centuries, a letter not used to represent ON /a/. _Dagr_ borrowed into OE would probably have yielded _*daw_ instead. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 23 '18 at 18:02
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This is your response to the linguistic facts? This is where you have your knowledge on Old Norse and Old English from? A new-age book on how to use runes for divination? This post is a disgrace for skeptics.SE. – Schmuddi Dec 17 '18 at 07:54
@Chloe, perhaps the image hosting service doesn't support the EXIF (JPEG) orientation tag, probably used in your photo. – bobbib Dec 20 '18 at 01:24
@bobbib Unlikely as I stripped the EXIF manually and rotated it manually with XnView as well then re-uploaded it. It didn't work either way. Unless the rotate operation in XnView was using EXIF... – Chloe Dec 20 '18 at 19:39

Is there a relationship between the words "night" and "eight"?

3 Answers3