Cumbersome, Cumberland, cucumbers and cummerbunds

We were just talking and my daughter mentioned the word cumbersome, and then Cumberland and then wondered if the two were connected. I somehow doubted it, but said I would look it up.

Cumbersome meaning, unwieldy, burdened, awkward comes from cumber + some – and cumber comes from a French word, which derives from Latin and means.. cumbersome. In looking this up I came across cumberworld, a seven hundred year old word for anything or anyone that encumbers the world without being useful… I must find a way of using that in something I write!

Cumberland is over a thousand years old – the name for that north-western area of the country, the area whatever it’ is called is much older, and now it is called Cumbria, an unpopular name. The name Cumberland still exists as Cumberland sausages , HMS Cumberland , Cumberland County Cricket Club , the Cumberland Fell Runners Club , the Cumberland Athletics Club, The Cumberland News, the Cumberland Building Society and many more examples.

Cumberland has nothing at all to do with being unwieldy, and is nt a Latin/French name, in fact it is much older – Cumbra land which came from ‘the region of the Cymry’. This, you might be able to guess has to do with the country known by its English name of Wales, rather than its own correct name of Cymru.

Cucumber, by the way has nothing to do with either cumbersome of Cumberland – it’s another word of French origin, though, which in turn came from Latin – cucumis…

Cummerbund is nothing to do with  English places, Welsh places, or salad vegetables – it comes from Persian via Hindi and means ‘loin band’…

… and here’s a picture of Cumbria: