For native English speak buddies

[Jim Koepke]

Then there is the influence on American spoken English… We have a lot of Chinese, Spanish, Native American and other words that have been infused into our everyday language.

Some school kids giggle when they learn what Grand Teton National park means in French.

named by either French-Canadian or Iroquois members of an expedition led by Donald McKenzie of the North West Company.

Some of the same school kids cringe when the learn about Mount Diablo in school.

In 1805 soldiers tried to capture Indians in a marsh north of Concord and, when the Indians completely disappeared into an eerie thicket in the night, the soldiers named the area “Monte Diablo” (thicket of the devil).

The name Monte del Diablo ('Mount of the Devil') appears on the "Plano topográfico de la Misión de San José" about 1824, where there was an Indian settlement at the approximate site of the present town of Concord

jtk

[James Pallas]

I used to keep a list of words that I found puzzling, now there’s one for you. I still laugh to myself when I remember them. Who would have thought to name that insect a bee, what’s that got to do with it. Still chuckle when I see a bee.

[Jim Koepke]

Here is another word from an unlikely source:

A relic of the large US presence in Japan in the years following World War II, the word honcho comes from the Japanese word hanchō meaning “leader of the squad, section, group.” We are uncertain of the exact route by which honcho found its way into American military argot in the mid-1950s, though it is known that the Japanese applied hanchō to British or Australian officers in charge of work parties in prisoner-of-war camps. By the 1960s, the word had become part of colloquial American jargon.

If one really wants to ponder such things look at one word used in the quote above, argot:

argot | ˈärɡō, ˈärɡət |
noun
the jargon or slang of a particular group or class: teenage argot.

the argot of the theater: jargon, slang, idiom, cant, parlance, vernacular, patois; dialect, speech, language; informal lingo.

jtk