Stories That Words Tell Us

by Elizabeth O'Neill

Some coins take their names from the names of places. The florin, or two-shilling piece, takes its name from Florence. Dollar is the same word as the German thaler, the name of a silver coin which was formerly called a Joachimstaler, from the silver-mine of Joachimstal, or "Joachim's Dale," in Bohemia. The ducat, a gold coin which was used in nearly all the countries of Europe in the Middle Ages, and which was worth about nine shillings, got its name from the duchy (in Italian, ducato) of Apulia, where it was first coined in the twelfth century.

It was an Italian town, Milan, which gave us our word milliner. This came from the fact that many fancy materials and ornaments used in millinery were imported from Milan.

Many old dances take their names from places. We hear a great deal nowadays of the "morris dances" which used to be danced in England in olden times. But morris comes from morys, an old word for "Moorish." In the Middle Ages this word was used, like "Turk" or "Tartar," to describe almost any Eastern people, and the name came, perhaps, from the fact that in these dances people dressed up, and so looked strange and foreign. The name of a very well-known dance, the polka, really means "Polish woman." Mazurka, the name of another dance, means "woman of Masovia." The old-fashioned slow dance known as the polonaise took its name from Poland, and was really a Polish dance. The well-known Italian dance called the tarantella took its name from the South Italian town Tarento.

The word canter, which describes another kind of movement, comes from Canterbury. Canter is only the short for "Canterbury gallop," an expression which was used to describe the slow jogging pace at which many pilgrims in the Middle Ages rode along the Canterbury road to pray at the famous shrine of St. Thomas Becket in that city.

Several fruits take their names from places. The damson, which used in the Middle Ages to be called the "damascene," was called in Latin prunum damascenum, or "plum of Damascus." The name peach comes to us from the Late Latin word pessica, which was a bad way of saying "Persica." Currants used to be known as "raisins of Corauntz," or Corinth raisins.

Parchment gets its name from Pergamum, a city in Asia Minor. Pistol came into English from the Old French word pistole, and this came from an Italian word, pistolese, which meant "made at Pistoja." We do not think of spaniels as foreign dogs; but the name means "Spanish," having come into English from the Old French word espagneul, with that meaning.

A derivation which it would be even harder to guess is that of the word spruce. We now use this word to describe a kind of leather, a kind of ginger beer, and a variety of the fir tree, and also in the same sense as "spick and span." The word used to be pruce, and meant "Prussia."

The name of the famous London fish-market, Billingsgate, has long been used to mean very violent and abusive language supposed to resemble the scoldings of the fishwomen in the market.

Another word describing a certain kind of speaking, and which also comes from the name of a place, is bunkum. When a person tells a story which we feel sure is not true, or tells a long tale to excuse himself from doing something, we often say it is all "bunkum." This word comes from the name of the American town of Buncombe, in North Carolina, and came into use through the member for Buncombe in the House of Representatives insisting on making a speech just when every one else wanted to proceed with the voting on a bill. He knew that he had nothing of importance to say, but explained that he must make a speech "for Buncombe"—that is, so that the people of Buncombe, who had elected him, might know that he was doing his duty by them. And so the expression bunkum came into use.

Another word which may go with these, because it also begins with the letter b, is bedlam. We describe a scene of great noise and confusion, as when a number of children insist on talking all together, as a "perfect bedlam." The word bedlam comes from Bethlehem. In the Middle Ages there was a hospital in London kept by monks of the Order of St. Mary of Bethlehem. In time this house came to be known as "Bedlam," and as after a while the hospital came to be an asylum for mad people, this name came to be used for any lunatic asylum. From that it came to have its modern use of any great noise or confusion.