Language is ever a problem to me but it is fascinating even to a dud like me how some root words have survived.

mention by GG and LiR of the Avons reminded me. Av for water and thereby streams and rivers is widespread - the long 'A' as in Pani for water in the east is another reminder of what must have been a common tongue for basic words many yonks ago. Like wise the Ma, mutter, mother, ami etc group maternal words and pre  Celt, I venture. Anyway a subject that more knowledgeable  minds here might add to  -  or ignore, of course. Paul is missed for his constant courtesies in this respect.

Think that Dad/Tad/Father/Pater/Vater etc are all relics of Indo-European prototypes too. iirc there are a number of "base"words, such as "dom" for home, that have been identified (or at least postulated). The real anomaly is Euskara (Basque) amongst modern European tongues. There are of course a numbe rof Finno-Ugric languages in use in Europe (Magyar perhaps the most prominent), and the orgin of Etruscan is not really fully explained. Oddities elsewhere include Sumerian. You would expect that to be a Semitic language, but it was not.

Priscilla wrote:

... mention by GG and LiR of the Avons reminded me. 

Yes, I was going to mention all the many British rivers called Exe, Axe, Esk, Usk, etc ... and even, perhaps, the word estuary ... but then GG widened the whole matter up in a much more informed way. I have little to add, at least for now, but I do hope this thread keeps going.

Not to mention the various rivers Piddle .... there is always the disputed provenance of Hillhillhill hill as successive waves of linguisticaly distinct locals augmented it. An example of Pratchett's "surly native" school of nomenclature which lead to a Discworld desert being widely known by a name which, in the indigenous tongue, means "Your finger, you fool".

Edited to correct tysop.

Edited again. FOREST of Skund not a desert. However one roundworld desert is called "Desert Desert". Sahara means - you guessed it!

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Hillhillhill hill", but I suspect it is rather like the name of the very popular tourist site in Somerset called "Wookey Hole Cavern" as being simply tautology. The modern name 'wookey' is essentially a corruption of the Welsh (or Brythonic) word "ogov" (meaning simply a natural cave); while in Old-English "hole" generally meant any natural hollow, such as cave, ravine or gorge etc; meanwhile "cavern"  is essentially a fancy quasi-classic English word created in the 18th century by Dr Johnson and others from the Middle-English, cave. So the current name, Wookey Hole Cavern, basically just means cave-cave-cave.

Torpenhow hill. see wikimisleadia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpenhow_Hill

I started a course forty and odd years ago at Birkbeck College (French) though I didn't finish it.  A professor emeritus who took one of the classes said that river names and mountain names were among the names that last longest in languages.  (This happened because someone - not Sincerely Thine - asked what the Latin name for the Seine was (it's Sequana, though that may originate from an earlier Celtic word).

One of the North Downs in Kent is called the Pennypot which sounds quaint enough in English. It is, however, believed to simply be an old Brythonic name Pen y Bod ('the Top of Life' or 'the Top of Food'). Whether ‘bod’ means ‘life’ or ‘food’ is probably semantic. The modern Welsh words for ‘food’ and ‘life’, for instance, are very similar to each other ‘bwyd’ and ‘bywyd’ which sort of stands to reason. That other life-giving element, water, is also represented in Kent in ancient Brythonic form. The modern Welsh word for water ‘dwr’ derives from the Brythonic root ‘dur’. This in turn is reflected in the Dour, the name of a stream (about 9 miles from Pennypot) which springs from the eastern edge of the Downs and reaches the sea at Dover, itself a derivative believed to mean ‘place of the waters’. 

P.S. The Denge & Pennypot Wood is a great place for a walk (whatever the weather):
 


(Just beware of the wolves.)

The very first words/ sounds used for communication would be of important concepts - such as family and kin..... lots of words evolved about that concept - and I suggest sound too eg the word 'long' which would in its various forms be drawn out in speech and that sound is used in several languages in different forms - eg lang etc.

But what interests me  at the moment is the word 'belong' meaning ownership but more really in terms of being with you for a length of time. Actually we really own very little we just have stuff in our possession for a length of time so it be-longs with us ....  as in simple use of English by tribals taking possession of something with ' you belonga me.' (or my gran spotting an eclair of the the tea table spread.)
I think the word  long is a remnant of a common understanding of length of time and distance with extended vowel sound. 
In Hindi/Urdu  the sound word booooort means greatly and prefaces generous description of size/time/distance/ a quality... a very useful  dramatic word often used with strong inflection  with facial expression and hands also brought into play. I ramble again.

I would guess that it was the cream in the eclair which gran prized the most P. The Persian pastry noon khamei (or nan khamei) ‘bread with cream’ is basically a profiterole but without the chocolate. If ever there was a word which is virtually the same in a huge number of European and west and south Asian languages then it is cream. Whether it be English (cream) or Dutch (room) or French (crème) or Italian (crema) or Greek (kréma) or Russian (krem) or Turkish (krem) or Arabic (karim) or Persian (khamei) or Urdu (karim) then it’s basically the same word. For some reason, however, some languages in north-western Europe such as Welsh (hufen), Irish (uachtar) and Danish (fløde) do not follow suit but then neither does Hindi (malaye) or Sanskrit (manda) while Latin (crepito) is also slightly off kilter.

Of course new languages are created alongside the old. "Namlish" - a Namibian-English is a recent example, as are the various "pidgin" (a corruptionn of the word  "business", it seems) tongues, which feature such delights as "Number one fella blong Misis Kwin" (the late Prince Philip) and "mixmaster blong Jesus Christ" for a helicopter. Actually much of the influence on these was Auustralian, hence "broken" became "bagarap" (in extreme cases such as "totally busted" even "im e bagarap altogether too much"

Thank you for that, GG. I needed a good laugh at something..... is laugh an old word remnant? Who cares. I also wonder what prehistoric people laughed about........