Violante is a name occurring in the South of France and the North of Italy and Spain. Whence it originally came is almost impossible to discover. It may very probably be a corruption of some old Latin name such as Valentinus, or, which would be a prettier derivation, it may be from the golden violet, the prize of the troubadours in the courts of love.
The name of the flower is universal; it is viola, in Latin, vas in Sanscrit; and in Greek anciently Γιον, but afterwards ἴον, whence later Greeks supposed it to have been named from having formed a garland round the head of Ion, the father of the Ionians.
That V is easily changed to Y, was plain in the treatment received by Violante, who was left to that dignified sound only in Spain; but in France was called Yolande, or for affection, Yolette; and in the confusion between y and j, figures in our own English histories in the queer-looking form of Joletta. The Scots, with much better taste, imported Yolette as Violet, learning it probably through the connections of the Archers of the Royal Guard, or it may be through Queen Mary’s friends, as Violet Forbes appears in 1571, and I have not found an earlier instance. At any rate, the Scottish love of floral names took hold of it, and the Violets have flourished there ever since. Fialka is both the flower and a family name in Bohemia; as is Veigel in the Viennese dialect. Eva Maria Veigel was the young danseuse, called by Maria Theresa, la Violetta, under which designation she came to England, and finally became the excellent wife of Garrick. Whether Viola has ever been a real Italian name I cannot learn, or whether it is only part of the stage property endeared to us by Shakespeare. The masculine Yoland was common at Cambrai in the thirteenth century; Yolante was there used down to the sixteenth.
Viridis (green, or flourishing) was not uncommon among Italian ladies in the fourteenth century, probably in allusion to some romance.
It is much to be feared that the lily, is as little traceable as the rose. There was a Liliola Gonzaga in Italy in 1340, but she was probably a softened Ziliola, or Cecilia. Lilias Ruthven, who occurs in Scotland, in 1557, was probably called from the old romantic poem of Roswal and Lillian, which for many years was a great favourite in Scotland. The Lillian of this ballad is Queen of Naples, and thus the name appears clearly traceable to the Cecilias of modern Italy, though it is now usually given in the sense of Lily; the English using Lillian; the Scots, Lillias. Indeed, it is quite possible that these, like Lilla, may sometimes have risen out of contractions of Elizabeth. Leila is a Moorish name, and Lelia is only the feminine of Lælius. On the whole, it may be said that only the Hebrew and Slavonic tongues present us with names really taken from individual flowers.[[88]]
[88]. Michaelis; Munch; Pott; Roscoe, Boiardo; Anderson, Genealogies; Douglas, Peerage of Scotland; Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poetry; Butler, Cervantes; Sismondi.
Section XXI.—Roman Catholic Names.
The two names that follow are as thorough evidences of the teachings of the Roman Church as are the epithets of the Blessed Virgin, before mentioned, and can, therefore, only be classed together, though it is rather hard upon good Latin to be saddled with them, compounded as they are of Latin and Greek.
The Latin verus (true), and the Greek εἰκών (an image), were strangely jumbled together by the popular tongue in the name of a crucifix at Lucca, which was called the Veraiconica, or Veronica; and was that Holy Face of Lucca by which William Rufus, having probably heard of it from the Lombard Lanfranc, his tutor, was wont to swear. Another Veronica is the same countenance upon a piece of linen, shown at St. Peter’s. Superstition, forgetting the meaning of the name, called the relic St. Veronica’s handkerchief, accounted for it by inventing a woman who had lent our Blessed Saviour a handkerchief to wipe His Face during the passage of the Via dolorosa, and had found the likeness imprinted upon it.