It is the first flower, except perhaps the Daisy, of which a child learns the familiar name; and yet it is a plant of unfailing interest to the botanical student, while its name is one of the greatest puzzles to the etymologist. The common and easy explanation of the name is that it means the first Rose of the year, but (like so many explanations that are derived only from the sound and modern appearance of a a name) this is not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to give here, but the short account is this—"The old name was Prime Rolles—or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr., primeverole: It., primaverola, diminutive of prima vera from flor di prima vera, the first spring flower. Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into primerolles, and this into primrose."—Dr. Prior. The name Primrose was not at first always applied to the flower, but was an old English word, used to show excellence—
"A fairer nymph yet never saw mine eie,
She is the pride and Primrose of the rest."
Spenser, Colin Clout.
"Was not I [the Briar] planted of thine own hande
To bee the Primrose of all thy lande;
With flow'ring blossomes to furnish the prime
And scarlet berries in sommer time?"
Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar—Februarie.
It was also a flower name, but not of our present Primrose, but of a very different plant. Thus in a Nominale of the fifteenth century we have "hoc ligustrum, a Primerose;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the same date we have "hoc ligustrum, Ace a Prymrose;" and in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," "Prymerose, primula, calendula, ligustrum"—and this name for the Privet lasted with a slight alteration into Shakespeare's time. Turner in 1538 says, "ligustrum arbor est non herba ut literatorū vulgus credit; nihil que minus est quam a Prymerose." In Tusser's "Husbandry" we have "set Privie or Prim" (September Abstract), and—
"Now set ye may
The Box and Bay
Hawthorn and Prim
For clothe's trim"—(January Abstract).
And so it is described by Gerard as the Privet or Prim Print (i.e., primé printemps), and even in the seventeenth century, Cole says of ligustrum, "This herbe is called Primrose." When the name was fixed to our present plant I cannot say, but certainly before Shakespeare's time, though probably not long before. It is rather remarkable that the flower, which we now so much admire, seems to have been very much overlooked by the writers before Shakespeare. In the very old vocabularies it does not at all appear by its present Latin name, Primula vulgaris, but that is perhaps not to be wondered at, as nearly all the old botanists applied that name to the Daisy. But neither is it much noticed by any English name. I can only find it in two of the vocabularies. In an English Vocabulary of the fourteenth century is "Hæc pimpinella, Ae primerolle," but it is very doubtful if this can be our Primrose, as the Pimpernel of old writers was the Burnet. Gower mentions it as the flower of the star Canis Minor—
"His stone and herbe as saith the scole
Ben Achates and Primerole."