There is a mountain range on the border of Switzerland and France called the Jura, and it’s been quite etymologically prolific. In addition to lending its name to a Swiss Canton and a French department, it’s the source of the Montes Jura, a mountain range on the surface of the moon. More importantly, it was the source of a lot of important excavations of fossils and rocks dating back to the mid-Mesozoic era, a time period that the French called jurassique and we call Jurassic – that should be familiar. The name Jura comes from the Gaulish word iuris, which meant “wooded mountain” and became a Roman toponym (that explains the i to j spelling change). That probably comes from the Proto-Celtic word for “forest”, jor, and would ultimately be from a Proto-Indo-European source.
