Where did the British names for different note lengths come from?

Question

I was always taught to use a certain set of names for the length of a note, such as crotchet, minim, quaver, and so on. I'm aware though that those terms aren't used as much outside the UK, and that terms like "quarter note" and "half note" etc. are often preferred elsewhere.Where did the British terms come from? Is there a historical reason why they differ from other English-speaking parts of the world?

Answer 1

The British names come from the original Medieval, Latin names, Breve and Semibreve. As music began requiring smaller values, they added the French work Crotchet (hook), and then the quaver and its derivatives.

In the US, the Pilgrims, whose Puritanical faith had shunned music as worship, soon began introducing music into worship, but found the Latin system clunky and based their names on fractional divisions of a bar in 4/4, the dominant time signature of hymns.