On the Study of Words by Richard Chenevix Trench (great book club books .TXT) 📖

I may find room for them here, are from Soloe, an Athenian colony in Cilicia, whose members soon forgot the Attic refinement of speech, and became notorious for the ungrammatical Greek which they talked.

And as things thus keep record in the names which they bear of the quarters from which they reached us, so also will they often do of the persons who, as authors, inventors, or discoverers, or in some other way, stood in near connexion with them. A collection in any language of all the names of persons which have since become names of things—from nomina apellativa have become nomina realia—would be very curious and interesting, I will enumerate a few. Where the matter is not familiar to you, it will not be unprofitable to work back from the word or thing to the person, and to learn more accurately the connexion between them.

To begin with mythical antiquity—the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Pan 'panic,' Paean, being a name of Apollo, the 'peony,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,' Proteus 'protean,' Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic,' and Daedalus 'dedal,' if this word, for which Spenser, Wordsworth, and Shelley have all stood godfathers, may find allowance with us. The demi-god Atlas figures with a world upon his shoulders in the title-page of some early works on geography; and has probably in this way lent to our map-books their name. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied the famous 'gordian' knot which Alexander cut, will supply a natural transition from mythical to historical. The 'daric,' a Persian gold coin, very much of the same value as our own rose noble, had its name from Darius. Mausolus, a king of Caria, has left us 'mausoleum,' Academus 'academy,' Epicurus 'epicure,' Philip of Macedon a 'philippic,' being such a discourse as Demosthenes once launched against the enemy of Greece, and Cicero 'cicerone.' Mithridates, who had made himself poison-proof, gave us the now forgotten 'mithridate' (Dryden) for antidote; as from Hippocrates we derived 'hipocras,' or 'ypocras,' often occurring in our early poets, being a wine supposed to be mingled after the great physician's receipt. Gentius, a king of Illyria, gave his name to the plant 'gentian,' having been, it is said, the first to discover its virtues. [Footnote: Pliny, H. N. xxv. 34.] Glaubers, who has bequeathed his salts to us, was a Dutch chemist of the seventeenth century. A grammar used to be called a 'donat' or 'donet' (Chaucer), from Donatus, a Roman grammarian of the fourth century, whose Latin grammar held its place as a school-book during a large part of the Middle Ages. Othman, more than any other the grounder of the Turkish dominion in Europe, reappears in our 'Ottoman'; and Tertullian, strangely enough, in the Spanish 'tertulia.' The beggar Lazarus has given us 'lazar' and 'lazaretto'; Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a 'vernicle,' being a napkin with the Saviour's face impressed upon it. Simon Magus gave us 'simony'; this, however, as we understand it now, is not a precise reproduction of his sin as recorded in Scripture. A common fossil shell is called an 'ammonite' from the fanciful resemblance to the twisted horns of Jupiter Ammon which was traced in it; Ammon again appearing in 'ammonia.' Our 'pantaloons' are from St. Pantaleone; he was the patron saint of the Venetians, who therefore very commonly received Pantaleon as their Christian name; it was from them transferred to a garment which they much affected. 'Dunce,' as we have seen, is derived from Duns Scotus. To come to more modern times, and not pausing at Ben Jonson's 'chaucerisms,' Bishop Hall's 'scoganisms,' from Scogan, Edward the Fourth's jester, or his 'aretinisms,' from Aretin; these being probably not intended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the 'pasquil' or 'pasquinade.' Derrick was the common hangman in the time of Charles II.; he bequeathed his name to the crane used for the lifting and moving of heavy weights. [Footnote: [But derick in the sense of 'gallows' occurs as early as 1606 in Dekker's Seven Deadly Sins of London, ed. Arber, p. 17; see Skeat's Etym. Dict., ed. 2, p. 799.]] 'Patch,' a name of contempt not unfrequent in Shakespeare, was, it is said, the proper name of a favourite fool of Cardinal Wolsey's. [Footnote: [The Cardinal's two fools were occasionally called patch, a term for a 'domestic fool,' from the patchy, parti-coloured dress; see Skeat (s. v.).]] Colonel Negus in Queen Anne's time is reported to have first mixed the beverage which goes by his name. Lord Orrery was the first for whom an 'orrery' was constructed; Lord Spencer first wore, or first brought into fashion, a 'spencer'; and the Duke of Roquelaure the cloak which still bears his name. Dahl, a Swede, introduced from Mexico the cultivation of the 'dahlia'; the 'fuchsia' is named after Fuchs, a German botanist of the sixteenth century; the 'magnolia' after Magnol, a distinguished French botanist of the beginning of the eighteenth; while the 'camelia' was introduced into Europe from Japan in 1731 by Camel, a member of the Society of Jesus; the 'shaddock' by Captain Shaddock, who first transplanted this fruit from the West Indies. In 'quassia' we have the name of a negro sorcerer of Surinam, who in 1730 discovered its properties, and after whom it was called. An unsavoury jest of Vespasian has attached his name in French to an unsavoury spot. 'Nicotine,' the poison recently drawn from tobacco, goes back for its designation to Nicot, a physician, who first introduced the tobacco-plant to the general notice of Europe. The Gobelins were a family so highly esteemed in France that the manufactory of tapestry which they had established in Paris did not drop their name, even after it had been purchased and was conducted by the State. A French Protestant refugee, Tabinet, first made 'tabinet' in Dublin; another Frenchman, Goulard, a physician of Montpellier, gave his to the soothing lotion, not unknown in our nurseries. The 'tontine' was conceived by Tonti, an Italian; another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena of animal electricity or 'galvanism'; while a third, Volta, lent a title to the 'voltaic' battery. Dolomieu, a French geologist, first called attention to a peculiar formation of rocks in Eastern Tyrol, called 'dolomites' after him. Colonel Martinet was a French officer appointed by Louvois as an army inspector; one who did his work excellently well, but has left a name bestowed often since on mere military pedants. 'Macintosh,' 'doyly,' 'brougham,' 'hansom,' 'to mesmerize,' 'to macadamize,' 'to burke,' 'to boycott,' are all names of persons or words formed from their names, and then transferred to things or actions, on the ground of some sort of connexion between the one and the other. [Footnote: Several other such words we have in common with the French. Of their own they have 'sardanapalisme,' any piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus. For 'lambiner,' to dally or loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, but accused of sluggish movement and wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal's Provincial Letters will remember Escobar, the famous casuist of the Jesuits, whose convenient devices for the relaxation of the moral law have there been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired, he owes his introduction into the French language; where 'escobarder' is used in the sense of to equivocate, and 'escobarderie' of subterfuge or equivocation. A pale green colour is in French called 'céladon' from a personage of this name, of a feeble and fade tenderness, who figures in Astrée, a popular romance of the seventeenth century. An unpopular minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unnecessary expenses in the State, saw his name transferred to the slight and thus cheap black outline portrait called a 'silhouette' (Sismondi, Hist, des Français, vol. xix, pp. 94, 95). In the 'mansarde' roof we are reminded of Mansart, the architect who introduced it. In 'marivaudage' the name of Marivaux is bound up, who was noted for the affected euphuism which goes by this name; very much as the sophist Gorgias gave [Greek: gorgiazein] to the Greek. The point of contact between the 'fiacre' and St. Fiacre is well known: hackney carriages, when first established in Paris, waited for their hiring in the court of an hotel which was adorned with an image of the Scottish saint.] To these I may add 'guillotine,' though Dr. Guillotin did not invent this instrument of death, even as it is a baseless legend that he died by it. Some improvements in it he made, and it thus happened that it was called after him.

Nor less shall we find history, at all events literary history, in the noting of the popular characters in books, who have supplied words that have passed into common speech. Thus from Homer we have 'mentor' for a monitor; 'stentorian' for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as, with all of Hector's nobleness, there is a certain amount of big talk about him, he has given us 'to hector'; [Footnote: See Col. Mure, Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 350.] while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful traffic out of which his name has passed into the words 'to pander' and 'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomonte, a hero of Boiardo; who yet, it must be owned, does not bluster and boast, as the word founded on his name seems to imply; adopted by Ariosto, it was by him changed into Rodamonte. 'Thrasonical' is from Thraso, the braggart of Roman comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; to Molière the French language owes 'tartuffe' and 'tartufferie.' 'Reynard' with us is a sort of duplicate for fox, while in French 'renard' has quite excluded the old 'volpils' being originally no more than the proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous beast-epic of the Middle Ages, Reineke Fuchs. The immense popularity of this poem we gather from many evidences—from none more clearly than from this. 'Chanticleer' is the name of the cock, and 'Bruin' of the bear in the same poem. [Footnote: See Génin, Des Variations du Langage Français, p.12] These have not made fortune to the same extent of actually putting out of use names which before existed, but contest the right of existence with them.

Occasionally a name will embody and give permanence to an error; as when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no title to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this (Kosmos, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The subject has also been very carefully treated by Major, Life of Prince Henry the Navigator, 1868. pp. 382-388] Our 'turkeys' are not from Turkey, as was assumed by those who so called them, but from that New World where alone they are native. This error the French in another shape repeat with their 'dinde' originally 'poulet d'Inde,' or Indian fowl. There lies in 'gipsy' or Egyptian, the assumption that Egypt was the original home of this strange people; as was widely believed when they made their first appearance in Europe early in the fifteenth century. That this, however, was a mistake, their language leaves no doubt; proclaiming as it does that they are wanderers from a more distant East, an outcast tribe from Hindostan. 'Bohemians' as they are called by the French, testifies to a similar error, to the fact that at their first apparition in Western Europe they were supposed by the common people in France to be the expelled Hussites of Bohemia.

Where words have not embodied an error, it will yet sometimes happen that the sound or spelling will to us suggest one. Against such in these studies it will be well to be on our guard. Thus many of us have been tempted to put 'domus' and 'dominus' into a connexion which really does not exist. There has been a stage in most boys' geographical knowledge, when they have taken for granted that 'Jutland' was so called, not because it was the land of the Jutes, but on account of its jutting out into the sea in so remarkable a manner. At a much later period of their education, 'Aborigines,' being the proper name of an Italian tribe, might very easily lead astray. [Footnote: See Pauly, Encyclop. s. v. Latium.] Who is there that has not mentally put the Gulf of Lyons in some connexion with the city of the same name? We may be surprised that the Gulf should have drawn its title from a city so remote and so far inland, but we accept the fact notwithstanding: the river Rhone, flowing by the one, and disemboguing in the other, seems to offer to us a certain link of