What do the words woodchuck, cockroach, hangnail, and catty corner have in common? They are examples of folk etymology. You might think that these words have some origin story that has to do with the meaning of their segments, but no. They are all derived from non-English languages, and got renamed because of the way the original words sounded instead of having any common meaning. Groundhog, which is the same animal as a woodchuck, really is derived from ground and hog. Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains what happened to create these English words and plenty of other examples. It's just a matter of "I can't pronounce your name, so I will call you something that sounds close that I can pronounce." Folk etymology occurs in other languages, too. That's how we ended up with a Mexican city named after a cow horn without an interesting story behind it.