There's an academic field called "historical linguistics" [0]. What laypeople believe about language is called "folk etymology" [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia

There's an academic field called "historical linguistics" [0]. What laypeople believe about language is called "folk etymology" [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_linguistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_linguistics [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology