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Consider the example of the etymology of the phrase "10 gallon hat":

Cattle drivers and ranchers in Texas and the Southwest often crossed paths with Mexican vaqueros who sported braided hatbands—called “galóns” in Spanish—on their sombreros. A “10 galón” sombrero was a hat with a large enough crown that it could hold 10 hatbands, but American cowboys may have anglicized the word to “gallon” and started referring to their own sombrero-inspired headgear as “10-gallon hats.”

-- From history.com

The veracity of this particular etymology aside, there are words and phrases whose origin is a misunderstanding or mishearing of some original word or phrase -- foreign or otherwise. This mistake then sticks, and the misheard word becomes the dominant, standard word in daily usage.

Is there a linguistic term for words that originate this way, or for this specific process of word transformation?

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    @EdwinAshworth: That does appear to be a duplicate. However, the alleged duplicate used to close my question is not a duplicate. It concerns a word to describe mistaken usage of a word in daily life. My question specifically requests a word to describe a type of etymology.
    – Jonah
    Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 15:15
  • "But the thing is, we want to avoid re-inventing the wheel." I understand and respect that. I still think accuracy of the linked duplicate is important for searchability and the experience of future users. It's somewhat of a nitpick in this specific case since the correct answer is already here and the correct duplicate is in the comments.
    – Jonah
    Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 15:32

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I think you may be referring to a type of folk etymology called "phono-semantic matching"

HERE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phono-semantic_matching

"A few PSMs exist in English, based on French loanwords; the mispronunciation of chaise longue as "chase-lounge" is a familiar example. The French word chartreuse (Carthusian monastery) was translated to the English charterhouse. The French word choupique, itself an adaptation of the Choctaw name for the bowfin, has likewise been Anglicized as "shoepike",[16] although it is unrelated to the pikes. The French name for the Osage orange, bois d'arc (lit. "bow-wood"), is sometimes rendered as "bowdark""

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  • Also, supposedly, Vermont’s Lemon Fair river: Lemon Fair River is a river in Addison County and Rutland County, in the U.S. state of Vermont. Les monts verts, the French name for the Green Mountains, is thought to be the source of the name. The Lemon Fair begins in the fields and farmlands of southern Orwell, Vermont. Wikipedia
    – Xanne
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 2:57
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Such phenomena fall into "folk etymology" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology

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