This got totally out of topic in the name-my-kitten thread, so I just thought I'd start a new thread here. (Regarding if the name "Fresia" means "Frost')
It's a coincidental homophone though. It is not named freeze-land, just as it's not named frieze-land, but after a very very old word that's probably cognate with "frizz" and "frizeren". Consider if an area were named Vorstland after a king of the past; many might understandably think it meant frost-land when it meant prince-land.
http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/fries3
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Frisian&allowed_in_frame=0
This is the result not of a word meaning different things in different languages but rather the same thing in different languages. (English, Dutch, and Frisian had not diverged when the name is first attested, so the original word would have been "West Germanic" rather than any of the three.)
One can still of course make an own name of Fresia (or whatever spelling variants) intending to reference frost. And a name really means what the namer intends. But it's origin doesn't have to do with frost is all.
Helloooo *waves northward*haha, I'm coincidentally from Friesland, The Netherlands! I'm sure the word mightve derived from that, but Friesland literally means Frostland in the Dutch language ^_^ languages are weird! A word may mean something in one language, and something else in another!
It's a coincidental homophone though. It is not named freeze-land, just as it's not named frieze-land, but after a very very old word that's probably cognate with "frizz" and "frizeren". Consider if an area were named Vorstland after a king of the past; many might understandably think it meant frost-land when it meant prince-land.
http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/fries3
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Frisian&allowed_in_frame=0
This is the result not of a word meaning different things in different languages but rather the same thing in different languages. (English, Dutch, and Frisian had not diverged when the name is first attested, so the original word would have been "West Germanic" rather than any of the three.)
One can still of course make an own name of Fresia (or whatever spelling variants) intending to reference frost. And a name really means what the namer intends. But it's origin doesn't have to do with frost is all.