On the Study of Words

by Richard Chenevix Trench

and again of 'Avernus' (=[Greek: aornos], Aen. vi. 243); being indeed in this anticipated by Lucretius (vi. 741):

quia sunt avibus contraria cunctis.

Ovid's taste is far from faultless, and his example cannot go for much; but he is always a graceful versifier, and his Fasti swarms with etymologies, correct and incorrect; as of 'Agonalis' (i. 322), of 'Aprilis' (iv. 89), of 'Augustus' (i. 609-614), of 'Februarius' (ii. 19-22), of 'hostia' (i. 336), of 'Janus' (i. 120-127), of 'Junius' (vi. 26), of 'Lemures' (v. 479-484), of 'Lucina' (ii. 449), of 'majestas' (v. 26), of 'Orion' (v. 535), of 'pecunia' (v. 280, 281), of 'senatus' (v. 64), of 'Sulmo'(iv. 79; cf. Silius Italicus, ix. 70); of 'Vesta' (vi. 299), of 'victima' (i. 335); of 'Trinacris' (iv. 420). He has them also elsewhere, as of 'Tomi' (Trist. iii. 9, 33). Lucilius, in like manner, gives us the etymology of 'iners': Ut perhibetur iners, ars in quo non erit ulla; Propertius (iv. 2, 3) of 'Vertumnus'; and Lucretius of 'Magnes' (vi. 909).]

The name of Port Natal also embodies a fact which must be of interest to its inhabitants, namely, that this port was discovered on Christmas Day, the dies natalis of our Lord.

Then again what poetry is there, as indeed there ought to be, in the names of flowers! I do not speak of those, the exquisite grace and beauty of whose names is so forced on us that we cannot miss it, such as 'Aaron's rod,' 'angel's eyes,' 'bloody warrior,' 'blue-bell, 'crown imperial,' 'cuckoo-flower,' blossoming as this orchis does when the cuckoo is first heard, [Footnote: In a catalogue of English Plant Names I count thirty in which 'cuckoo' formed a component part.] 'eye- bright,' 'forget-me-not,' 'gilt-cup' (a local name for the butter-cup, drawn from the golden gloss of its petals), 'hearts-ease,' 'herb-of- grace,' 'Jacob's ladder,' 'king-cup,' 'lady's fingers,' 'Lady's smock,' 'Lady's tresses,' 'larkspur,' 'Lent lily,' 'loose-strife,' 'love-in- idleness,' 'Love lies bleeding,' 'maiden-blush,' 'maiden-hair,' 'meadow-sweet,' 'Our Lady's mantle,' 'Our Lady's slipper,' 'queen-of- the-meadows,' 'reine-marguerite,' 'rosemary,' 'snow-flake,' 'Solomon's seal,' 'star of Bethlehem,' 'sun-dew,' 'sweet Alison,' 'sweet Cicely,' 'sweet William,' 'Traveller's joy,' 'Venus' looking-glass,' 'Virgin's bower,' and the like; but take 'daisy'; surely this charming little English flower, which has stirred the peculiar affection of English poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth, and received the tribute of their song, [Footnote: 'Fair fall that gentle flower, A golden tuft set in a silver crown,' as Brown exclaims, whose singularly graceful Pastorals should not be suffered to fall altogether to oblivion. In Ward's recent English Poets, vol. ii. p. 65, justice has been done to them, and to their rare beauty.] becomes more charming yet, when we know, as Chaucer long ago has told us, that 'daisy' is day's eye, or in its early spelling 'daieseighe,' the eye of day; these are his words:

'That men by reson well it calle may
The daisie, or elles the ye of day.'
Chaucer, ed. Morris, vol. v. p. 281.

For only consider how much is implied here. To the sun in the heavens this name, eye of day, was naturally first given, and those who transferred the title to our little field flower meant no doubt to liken its inner yellow disk, or shield, to the great golden orb of the sun, and the white florets which encircle this disk to the rays which the sun spreads on all sides around him. What imagination was here, to suggest a comparison such as this, binding together as this does the smallest and the greatest! what a travelling of the poet's eye, with the power which is the privilege of that eye, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, and of linking both together. So too, call up before your mind's eye the 'lavish gold' of the drooping laburnum when in flower, and you will recognize the poetry of the title, 'the golden rain,' which in German it bears. 'Celandine' does not so clearly tell its own tale; and it is only when you have followed up the [Greek: chelidonion], (swallow-wort), of which 'celandin' is the English representative, that the word will yield up the poetry which is concealed in it.

And then again, what poetry is there often in the names of birds and beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe, long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining, though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even the proportions of the camel with the spotted skin of the pard, by a name which should incorporate both these its most prominent features, [Footnote: Varro: Quod erat figura ut camelus, maculis ut panthera; and Horace (Ep. ii. I, 196): Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo.] calling it the 'camelopard.' Nor can we, I think, hesitate to accept that account as the true one, which describes the word as no artificial creation of scientific naturalists, but as bursting extempore from the lips of the common people, who after all are the truest namers, at the first moment when the novel creature was presented to their gaze. 'Cerf-volant,' a name which the French have so happily given to the horned scarabeus, the same which we somewhat less poetically call the 'stag-beetle,' is another example of what may be effected with the old materials, by merely bringing them into new and happy combinations.

You know the appearance of the lizard, and the star-like shape of the spots which are sown over its back. Well, in Latin it is called 'stellio,' from stella, a star; just as the basilisk had in Greek this name of 'little king' because of the shape as of a kingly crown which the spots on its head might be made by the fancy to assume. Follow up the etymology of 'squirrel,' and you will find that the graceful creature which bears this name has obtained it as being wont to sit under the shadow of its own tail. [Footnote: [The word squirrel is a diminutive of the Greek word for squirrel, [Greek: skiouros], literally 'shadow-tail.'] Need I remind you of our 'goldfinch,' evidently so called from that bright patch of yellow on its wing; our 'kingfisher,' having its name from the royal beauty, the kingly splendour of the plumage with which it is adorned? Some might ask why the stormy petrel, a bird which just skims and floats on the topmost wave, should bear this name? No doubt we have here the French 'pétrel,' or little Peter, and the bird has in its name an allusion to the Apostle Peter, who at his Master's bidding walked for a while on the unquiet surface of an agitated sea. The 'lady-bird' or 'lady-cow' is prettily named, as indeed the whole legend about it is full of grace and fancy [Footnote: [For other names for the 'lady-bird,' and the reference in many of them to God and the Virgin Mary, see Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, p. 694.]; but a common name which in many of our country parts this creature bears, the 'golden knob,' is prettier still. And indeed in our country dialects there is a wide poetical nomenclature which is well worthy of recognition; thus the shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' or sometimes 'windfanner,' which it popularly bears. [Footnote: In Wallace's Tropical Nature there is a beautiful chapter on humming birds, and the names which in various languages these exquisite little creatures bear.] The amount is very large of curious legendary lore which is everywhere bound up in words, and which they, if duly solicited, will give back to us again. For example, the Greek 'halcyon,' which we have adopted without change, has reference, and wraps up in itself an allusion, to one of the most beautiful and significant legends of heathen antiquity; according to which the sea preserved a perfect calmness for all the period, the fourteen 'halcyon days,' during which this bird was brooding over her nest. The poetry of the name survives, whether the name suggested the legend, or the legend the name. Take again the names of some of our precious stones, as of the topaz, so called, as some said, because men were only able to conjecture ([Greek: topazein]) the position of the cloud-concealed island from which it was brought. [Footnote: Pliny, H. N. xxxvii. 32. [But this is only popular etymology: the word can hardly be of Greek origin; see A. S. Palmer, Folk-Etymology, p. 589.]

Very curious is the determination which some words, indeed many, seem to manifest, that their poetry shall not die; or, if it dies in one form, that it shall revive in another. Thus if there is danger that, transferred from one language to another, they shall no longer speak to the imagination of men as they did of old, they will make to themselves a new life, they will acquire a new soul in the room of that which has ceased to quicken and inform them any more. Let me make clear what I mean by two or three examples. The Germans, knowing nothing of carbuncles, had naturally no word of their own for them; and when they first found it necessary to name them, as naturally borrowed the Latin 'carbunculus,' which originally had meant 'a little live coal,' to designate these precious stones of a fiery red. But 'carbunculus,' word full of poetry and life for Latin-speaking men, would have been only an arbitrary sign for as many as were ignorant of that language. What then did these, or what, rather, did the working genius of the language, do? It adopted, but, in adopting, modified slightly yet effectually the word, changing it into 'Karfunkel,' thus retaining the framework of the original, yet at the same time, inasmuch as 'funkeln' signifies 'to sparkle,' reproducing now in an entirely novel manner the image of the bright sparkling of the stone, for every knower of the German tongue. 'Margarita,' or pearl, belongs to the earliest group of Latin words adopted into English. The word, however, told nothing about itself to those who adopted it. But the pearl might be poetically contemplated as the sea-stone; and so our fathers presently transformed 'margarita' into 'mere-grot,' which means nothing less. [Footnote: Such is the A.S. form of margarita in three versions of the parable of the Pearl of Great Price, St. Matt. xiii. 45; see Anglo-Saxon Gospels, ed. Skeat, 1887.] Take another illustration of this from another quarter. The French 'rossignol,' a nightingale, is undoubtedly the Latin 'lusciniola,' the diminutive of 'luscinia,' with the alteration, so frequent in the Romance languages, of the commencing 'l' into 'r.' Whatever may be the etymology of 'luscinia,' it is plain that for Frenchmen in general the word would no longer suggest any meaning at all, hardly even for French scholars, after the serious transformations which it had undergone; while yet, at the same time, in the exquisitely musical 'rossignol,' and still more perhaps in the Italian 'usignuolo,' there is an evident intention and endeavour to express something of the music of the bird's song in the liquid melody of the imitative name which it bears; and thus to put a new soul into the word, in lieu of that other which had escaped. Or again—whatever may be the meaning of Senlac, the name of that field where the ever-memorable battle, now better known as the Battle of Hastings, was fought, it certainly was not 'Sanglac,' or Lake of Blood; the word only shaping itself into this significant form subsequently to the battle, and in consequence of it.