'Cremation' is Latin for 'a burning' — an ancient rite revived by the 19th-century reform movement.
The disposal of a dead body by burning; the process of reducing a corpse to ite remains through intense heat.
From Latin 'cremātiōnem' (nominative 'cremātiō'), a noun of action from 'cremāre' (to burn, to consume by fire). The Latin 'cremāre' derives from PIE *kremh₂- (to burn), a root that appears also in Lithuanian 'kurti' (to heat, to fire up) and Old Church Slavonic 'krěsъ' (fire, spark). The word entered English as a learned term for the ancient practice of burning the dead, and gained fresh currency in the late nineteenth century with the modern cremation
The word 'cremains' — a portmanteau of 'cremated remains' — was coined by the American funeral industry in the twentieth century and is one of the most successful modern euphemisms in English. Technically, cremains are not 'ashes' at all but pulverized bone fragments; the organic matter is completely consumed, and what remains is calcium phosphate from the skeleton.