On the popular names of British plants : being an explanation of the origin and meaning of the names of our indigenous and most commonly cultivated species / by R.C.A. Prior.

  • Prior, R. C. Alexander (Richard Chandler Alexander), 1809-1902.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the popular names of British plants : being an explanation of the origin and meaning of the names of our indigenous and most commonly cultivated species / by R.C.A. Prior. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The authors of our dictionaries give very few plant-names, and are quite satisfied to refer these to a corresponding Trench, Anglo-Saxon, or Latin word, and to suppose that they have then arrived at the root of them. Our botanists have, in general, been too much occupied with plants to care for etymology, and our lexicographers have been townsmen, and, for the most part, quite ignorant of botany, and its literature. As the term “Ind-European” will be frequently used, and some may refer to the following vocabulary, who have not entered into philological speculations of this kind, it is necessary to mention that the analysis of words, and the comparison of their roots and gramma- tical structure, have proved that all the principal lan- guages of alphabetic literature, exclusive of the Arabic and its allies, are intimately connected with the ancient dialects of Persia and Northern India. This has been con- sidered by many writers as a proof that all the nations which speak them have descended from a common stock, and although this inference as to the people may be incor- rect, still, in a philological point of view, we may treat the languages as sister descendants of some Asiatic parent which has long since perished, and rank with them such other dialects as agree with these in their roots and struc- ture. Under “Ind-European,” then, will be comprised Sanskrit and Zend, and all the Indian and Persian dialects that are related to them; Greek; Latin, and its modem varieties; Celtic; Gothic, and all the other Germanic and Scandinavian dialects; Lithuanian; Slavonian; and probably