Vietnamese Water.

Another in my occasional series featuring dubious statements about language by scholars in other fields: Nelson Goering posts on FB about a book on Vietnamese history he’s reading in which the author claims the Vietnamese word for water, nác/nước, derives from “one of the archaic Vietnamese terms for woman (nàng).” (This is in service of a point about “a possible Earth Mother cult,” which makes me sigh an entirely separate sigh.) Now, I know next to nothing about Vietnamese etymology, but I know enough to be skeptical about that, and sure enough, a quick visit to Wiktionary informed me that nước is “From Proto-Vietic *ɗaːk (‘water’), from Proto-Mon-Khmer *ɗaak (‘water’).” (If you’re curious about that archaic Vietnamese term for woman, nàng, it’s from Proto-Tai *naːŋᴬ ‘lady.’) I realize the Vietnamese word starts with n- and the protoforms with d-; I am assuming this is a regular or at least explicable development or it wouldn’t be stated with such assurance, but as I say, I am…