Old Quentin Letts was on the wireless the other day asking ‘What’s the point of the London black cab?’ Between much shouting from my husband (a sign he is paying attention) I heard an old cabby explain that the word taxi came from its German inventor, whose name was Thurn und Taxis. Really!
There is no defeating this blunder, which is all over the internet. In reality taxi came into English from the French taximètre (1905), where the first element represents taxe, ‘tariff’.
Taxis are hackney carriages. Autodidact cab-drivers cite an origin from Middle Dutch, in which an ambling horse was called hackeneie. But why did the Dutch call it that? In 1898, the Oxford English Dictionary was sure it had nothing to do with the place Hackney, but might be connected with the Spanish haca.
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