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.

  • Richard Chandler Alexander Prior
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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    corn-fields, was “ called in English Ground pine, and Ground ivie, after the Latin word Iva.” This term Ground ivy was assigned by others to a small labiate plant, the Hedera terrestris, and ivy regarded as the equivalent of hedera, and subsequently transferred to the Hedera helix, our present Ivy. The origin of Ajuga seems to have been a mere error of the copyist in transcribing the passage from the 24th book of Pliny. For, as distinct as are abiga and ajuga in our modern print, the b of abiga might be written so as to look like a v or u, and the word made to appear auiga, which, if the i were not dotted, might he as easily read aiuga as auiga. See Ivy. Thus by a train of blunders, Pliny’s abiga becomes ajuga, and ajuga iua or iva. This abiga, ajuga, or iua was, as Pliny tells us, the same as the Greek chanuepitys. The yew-tree gets the name of chamce- pitys through a remark made by Apuleius, and thereby, as its synonym, that of iua or iva. The ground-pine, from its terebinthinate odour, also gets the name of chanuepitys, and thereby, as its synonym, that of iua or iva. But from chanue- being equivalent to terrestris, this name iua or iva passes over to a weed called, from the shape of its leaf and creeping habit, hedera terrestris, and the equivocal word hedera conveys it to the shrub called ivy. Some of the dic- tionaries give a pretended Celtic iw, green, as its root. There does not appear to be any such word. Taxus baccata, L. Yoke Elm, the hornbeam, from yokes being made of it, Gr. tjjyia, Carpinus Betulus, L. Yoke. This word has been brought hither by our ancestors in their migrations from central Asia, where it has always borne the same name, meaning connexion or coupling, Skr.jugam or yuga, Pers. juh, jug, or juk, Y.jugum, Go.juk, A.S. geoc, or iuc, G. joch, Sw. ok. Even the Gr. tpyov is the same word, a £ replacing a j, as in £ea, Skr. java, Pei'S, jew; Zev rrarep, L. Jupiter; ^evyvv/u, jungere. Other nations of common descent with us have a similar
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