Wordorigins.org

The origin of the verb to die is a bit of a mystery. One would expect that such a basic verb would go back to Old English, especially since the word has a Germanic root. But it is not attested to the Old English literature, not appearing until the early Middle English period. Instead, Old English used two other verbs, sweltan (which survives in the modern sweltering) and steorfan (the modern form of which is to starve, although in Old English it could mean death by any means, not just lack of food).

The standard interpretation is that word disappeared early in the Old English period, only to be reintroduced by the Normans. It comes from an Old Norse root deyja. The verb also died out in Gothic and the other West Germanic languages too, surviving only in the North Germanic languages.

Earl is the counterpart of churl. It originally simply denoted a man of noble birth. The word appears in several Germanic languages. Its cognates include the Old Saxon erl and the Old Norse earl, which later developed into iarl or jarl.

Like many Old English words, its date of appearance cannot be determined with any precision. The earliest known English citation is probably from sometime before 616 in the Laws of Ethelbert:

Gif on eorles tune man mannan ofsleæhþ xii scillinga gebete.
(If, in an earl’s town, a man slays a man, [he shall] pay 12 shillings.)

Earl also had a poetic sense, denoting a warrior, a brave man, or even just a man generally. Beowulf lines 356-57 read:

Hwearf þa hrædlice,     þær Hroðgar sæt,
eald ond unhar     mid his eorla gedriht
(They quickly turn to     where Hrothgar sat
old and hoary,     with his company of earls)

Following the Norman conquest, earl was formalized as a title, with a rank equivalent to that of a continental count.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Churl is a word that isn’t used much anymore, although you will see the adjective churlish from time to time in modern usage. It has a rather straightforward etymology and it’s primarily interesting for its usage in the Old English period, when it was a synonym for man.

These two words demonstrate the perils of reading too much into Indo-European roots and highlight how much we just don’t know about the Proto-Indo-European language (or languages). Book and beech, the type of tree, appear to be related, but traditional etymologies of the words are largely based on conjecture and we can’t even say for certain that they are, in fact, related.

Anglo-Saxon is the adjective given to the Germanic tribes that migrated to and conquered Britain in the 5th century. Later it took on the meaning of referring to England and the English people as a whole. The name comes from two of the tribes that made this migration.

The Angles are thought to be from an area of Holstein, in what is now northern Germany, known as the Angul, so-called because of its shape. The word comes from a common Germanic root meaning a hook or other bent object. The Angles bequeathed their name to England and the English.