DERIVATION OF CURIOUS BOTANIC NAMES, AND ANCIENT ITALIAN KALYDOR.
The generic name of the fern Ceterach officinarum is generally said to be derived from the Arabic Chetherak. I find however, among a list of ancient British names of plants, published in 1633 at the end of Johnson's edition of Gerard, the expression cedor y wrach, which means the joined or double rake, and is exactly significant of the form of the Ceterach. The Fernrakes are joined as it were back to back; but the single prongs of the one alternate botanically with those of the other. Master Robert Dauyes, of Guissaney in Flintshire, the correspondent of Johnson, gives the name of another of the Filices (Equisetum) as the English equivalent of the ancient British term. But the form of this plant does not at all correspond to that signified by the Celtic words. It is not improbable, therefore, that he was wrong as respects the correct English name of the plant.
The Turkish shetr or chetr, to cut, and warak, a leaf, seem to point out the meaning of the Arabic term quoted in Hooker's Flora and elsewhere. Probably some of your Oriental readers will have the kindness to supply the exact English for chetherak.
It appears to me, however, that the transition from cedorwrach to ceterach is more easy, and is a more probable derivation.
Hooker and Loudon say that another generic name, Veronica, is of doubtful origin. In the Arabic language I find virunika as the name of a plant. This word is evidently composed of nikoo, beautiful, and viroo, remembrance; viroonika. therefore means beautiful remembrance, and is but an Oriental name for a Forget-me-not, for which flower the Veronica chamædrys has often been mistaken. Possibly the name may have come to us from the Spanish-Arabian vocabulary. The Spaniards call the same plant veronica. They use this word to signify the representation of our Saviour's face on a handkerchief. When Christ was bearing his cross, a young woman, the legend says, wiped his face with her handkerchief, which thenceforth retained the divine likeness.[[1]]
The feminine name Veronica is of course the Latin form of Φερονίκη, victory-bearer (of which Berenice is the Macedonian and Latin construction), and is plainly, thus derived, inappropriate as the designation of a little azure wild flower which, like loving eyes, greets us everywhere.
In looking over Martin Mathée's notes on Dioscorides, published 1553, I find that Italian women of his time used to make a cosmetic of the root of the Arum, commonly called "Lords and Ladies." The mixture, he says, makes the skin wondrously
white and shining, and is called gersa. ("Ils font des racines d'Aron de l'eaue et de lexive," &c., tom. v. p. 98.)
Hughes Fraser Halle, LL.D.
South Lambeth.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
[See "N. & Q.," Vol. vi., pp. 199. 252. 304.]