English
Venmo
After the Venmo mobile payment system.
A blend of vēndō ‘to sell’ + mobile
Proto-Indo-European *m(y)ewh₁- ‘to move’
Proto-Indo-European *m(y)owh₁éyeti
Proto-Italic *moweō ‘to move’
Latin moveō ‘move’
Latin mōbilis ‘easy to be moved’
English mobile
The story
We were exploring the Latin root vendere “sell” and mo for mobile, but purely as a means to get to a name that (1) was short, 5-6 letters, (2) could be a verb, (3) didn’t have a unintuitive spelling, and (4) was cheap. Venmo was available on GoDaddy and met the important criteria, so we grabbed it.
Today it means
noun An account on the Venmo peer-to-peer mobile payment system.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Venmo