A place to learn about math etymology?

Solution 1:

You'll want to check out Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics, maintained by Jeff Miller. In particular, an entry for 'kernel' appears here.

Solution 2:

It's unclear if you want to discuss the reason for a particular choice of a word (whether coined or borrowed), or the etymological meaning of the word. For example, "kernel" is a perfectly fine English word, refering to a whole seed of a cereal (the word coming from the Indo-European root greno-). But the etyomological origin is somewhat different from the reason why it was chosen to refer to the particular mathematical concept it refers to.

One source for the etymology (and sometimes mathematical origin) is The Words of Mathematics: An Etymological Dictionary of Mathematical Terms Used in English, by Steven Schwartzmann, published by the Mathematical Association of America. It will tell you things like what the Latin origin of "conjecture" is, and so on. It does not provide much in the way of historical mathematical origin (i.e., why the word was chosen for that particular concept). Sometimes this is clear from the origin of the word, but often this is not the case.