(Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, Prol., l. 184.)
In studying that part of our vocabulary which especially illustrates the tendencies shown in popular name-giving, one is struck by the keen observation and imaginative power shown by our far-off ancestors, and the lack of these qualities in later ages.
Perhaps in no part of the language does this appear so clearly as in the names of plants and flowers. The most primitive way of naming a flower is from some observed resemblance, and it is curious to notice the parallelism of this process in various languages. Thus our crowfoot, crane's bill, larkspur, monkshood, snapdragon, are in German Hahnenfuss (cock's foot), Storchschnabel (stork's bill), Rittersporn (knight's spur), Eisenhut (iron hat), Löwenmaul (lion's mouth). I have purposely chosen instances in which the correspondence is not absolute, because examples like Löwenzahn (lion's tooth), dandelion (Fr. dent de lion) may be suspected of being mere translations. I give the names in most general use, but the provincial variants are numerous, though usually of the same type. The French names of the flowers mentioned are still more like the English. The more learned words which sometimes replace the above are, though now felt as mere symbols, of similar origin, e.g., geranium and pelargonium, used for the cultivated crane's bill, are derived from the Greek for crane and stork respectively. So also in chelidonium, whence our celandine or swallow-wort, we have the Greek for swallow.
In the English names of plants we observe various tendencies of the popular imagination. We have the crudeness of cowslip for earlier cowslop, cow-dung, and many old names of unquotable coarseness, the quaintness of Sweet William, lords and ladies, bachelors' buttons, dead men's fingers, and the exquisite poetry of forget-me-not, heart's ease, love in a mist, traveller's joy. There is also a special group named from medicinal properties, such as feverfew, a doublet of febrifuge, and tansy, Fr. tanaisie, from Greco-Lat. athanasia, immortality. We may compare the learned saxifrage, stone-breaker, of which the Spanish doublet is sassafras. The German name is Steinbrech.
There must have been a time when a simple instinct for poetry was possessed by all nations, as it still is by uncivilised races and children. Among European nations this instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a mountain nor a flower. Our Mount Costigan, Mount Perry, Mount William cut a sorry figure beside the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the Monk, the Maiden, the Storm Pike, the Dark Eagle Pike.[24] Occasionally a race which is accidentally brought into closer contact with nature may have a happy inspiration, such as the Drakensberg (dragon's mountain) or Weenen[25] (weeping) of the old voortrekkers. But the Cliff of the Falling Flowers, the name of a precipice over which the Korean queens cast themselves to escape dishonour, represents an imaginative realm which is closed to us.[26] The botanist who describes a new flower hastens to join the company of Messrs Dahl, Fuchs, Lobel, Magnol and Wistar, while fresh varieties are used to immortalise a florist and his family.
NAMES OF FRUITS
The names of fruits, perhaps because they lend themselves less easily to imaginative treatment, are even duller than modern names of flowers. The only English names are the apple and the berry. New fruits either retained their foreign names (cherry, peach, pear, quince) or were violently converted into apples or berries, usually the former. This practice is common to the European languages, the apple being regarded as the typical fruit. Thus the orange is usually called in North Germany Apfelsine, apple of China, with which we may compare our "China orange." In South Germany it was called Pomeranze (now used especially of the Seville orange), from Ital. pomo, apple, arancia, orange. Fr. orange is folk-etymology (or, gold) for *arange, from Arab. narandj, whence Span. naranja. Melon is simply the Greek for "apple," and has also given us marmalade, which comes, through French, from Port. marmelada, quince jam, a derivative of Greco-Lat. melimelum, quince, lit. honey-apple. Pine-apple meant "fir-cone" as late as the 17th century, as Fr. pomme de pin still does.[27] The fruit was named from its shape, which closely resembles that of a fir-cone. Pomegranate means "apple with seeds." We also find the apricot, lemon (pomcitron), peach, and quince all described as apples.
At least one fruit, the greengage, is named from a person, Sir William Gage, a gentleman of Suffolk, who popularised its cultivation early in the 18th century. It happens that the French name of the fruit, reine-claude (pronounced glaude), is also personal, from the wife of Francis I.
Animal nomenclature shows some strange vagaries. The resemblance of the hippopotamus, lit. river-horse, to the horse, hardly extends beyond their common possession of four legs.[28] The lion would hardly recognise himself in the ant-lion or the sea-lion, still less in the chameleon, lit. earth-lion, the first element of which occurs also in camomile, earth-apple. The guinea-pig is not a pig, nor does it come from Guinea (see p. [51]). Porcupine means "spiny pig." It has an extraordinary number of early variants, and Shakespeare wrote it porpentine. One Mid. English form was porkpoint. The French name has hesitated between spine and spike. The modern form is porc-épic, but Palsgrave has "porkepyn a beest, porc espin." Porpoise is from Old Fr. porpeis, for porc peis (Lat. porcus piscis), pig-fish. The modern French name is marsouin, from Ger. Meerschwein, sea-pig; cf. the name sea-hog, formerly used in English. Old Fr. peis survives also in grampus, Anglo-Fr. grampais for grand peis, big fish, but the usual Old French word is craspeis or graspeis, fat fish.
The caterpillar seems to have suggested in turn a cat and a dog. Our word is corrupted by folk-etymology from Old Fr. chatepeleuse, "a corne-devouring mite, or weevell" (Cotgrave). This probably means "woolly cat," just as a common species is popularly called woolly bear, but it was understood as being connected with the French verb peler, "to pill, pare, barke, unrinde, unskin" (Cotgrave). The modern French name for the caterpillar is chenille, a derivative of chien, dog. It has also been applied to a fabric of a woolly nature; cf. the botanical catkin, which is in French chaton, kitten.