From the Notes on Amateur Linguistics / Andrey Zaliznyak. — 2nd ed., revised and supplemented. — Moscow: Alpina Non-Fiction, 2024. — 208 p. ISBN 978-5-00139-914-8. Amateur speculations about the origin of words, based not on the science of language history but on the naive idea that such reasoning does not require any special knowledge, only simple guesses, have become noticeably widespread in modern publications. Based on these amateur guesses about word origins, authors often build completely fantastic conclusions about the history of entire peoples. In A. A. Zaliznyak's work "From the Notes on Amateur Linguistics," it is shown how such reasoning differs from professional linguistics and why it has no chance to uncover the true history of words. Special attention is given to the most vivid example of using amateur linguistics to construct a fictitious history of many countries — the so-called "new chronology" by A. T. Fomenko. The second edition also includes the article "On the 'Book of Veles'." UDC 811(091) (092) BBK 80+81g (2) 6d.