Chapter CXXVII: Section XX: Flower Names

Flower names seem to have been entirely unknown to the ancient Romans, but the Latin language, in the mouths of more poetical races, has given several graceful floral names, though none perhaps are quite free from the imputation of being originally something far less elegant.

Thus, _oliva_ (the olive), the sign of peace and joy, is closely connected with the Italian Oliviero; but it is much to be suspected that it would never have blossomed into use, but for the Teutonic Olaf (forefather’s relic). Oliviero, or Ulivieri, the paladin of Charlemagne, may be considered as almost certainly a transmogrified Anlaf, or Olaf (ancestor’s relic); and perhaps it is for this reason that his name is one of the most frequently in use among all those of the circle of paladins. He was a favourite hero of Pulci, and seems to have so nearly approached Orlando in fame, as at least to be worthy of figuring in the proverb of giving a Rowland for an Oliver. The middle ages made great use of his name in France and England. Olier, as it was called at home by the Breton knights, whom the French called Olivier, was the name of the favourite brother of Du Guesclin, as well as of the terrible Constable de Clisson. Oliver was frequent with English knights, and of high and chivalrous repute, until the eminence of the Protector rendered ‘old Noll’ a word of hate and would-be scorn to the Cavaliers—an association which it has never entirely overcome. The feminine was probably first invented in Italy, but the Italian literature that flowed in on us in the Tudor reigns brought it to us, and we were wise enough to naturalize Olivia as Olive, a form that still survives in some parts of the country.

Whether it is true that the “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” never appears to have been tried, for all countries seem to express both the flower and its blushing tint by the same sound; and even the Syriac name for the oleander (the rose-laurel), “the blossoms red and bright” of the Lake of Tiberias, is _rodyon_.

The Greeks had their Rhoda, but the Romans never attained such a flight of poetry as a floral name, and the rose-wreath would hardly deserve to be relegated to a Latin root, were it not that the branches spread so widely, that it is more convenient to start from this common stem, to which all are bound by mutual resemblance; besides which, both the saints of this name were of Romance nations. Still, I believe, that though _their_ names were meant for roses when given to them, that the first use of _hrôs_ among the Teutons was a meaning sometimes fame, sometimes a horse—not the flower.

Rohais, or Roesia, most probably the French and Latin of _hrôs_ (fame), or else from _hros_ (horse), is the first form in which the simple word appears in England. Rohais, wife of Gilbert de Gaunt, died in 1156; Roese de Lucy was wife of Fulbert de Dover, in the time of Henry II.; Roesia was found at the same time among the De Bohuns and De Veres; and some of these old Norman families must have carried it to Ireland, where Rose is one of the most common of the peasant names. Rosel and Rosette both occur at Cambrai between 900 and 1200.

During the twelfth century, probably among the Normans of Sicily, lived Rosalia, “the darling of each heart and eye,” who, in her youth, dedicated herself to a hermit life in a mountain grotto, and won a saintly reputation for her name, which is frequent in her island, as is Rosalie in France, and at the German town of Duderstadt, where it is vilely tortured into Sahlke.

St. Dominic arranged a series of devotions, consisting of the meditations, while rehearsing the recurring _aves_ and _paters_ marked by the larger and smaller nuts, or berries, on a string. These, which we call beads from _beden_ (to pray), formed the _rosarium_, or rose garden, meaning originally the delights of devotion. This _rosarium_ has a day to itself in the Roman calendar, and possibly may have named the Transatlantic saint, Rosa di Lima, the whole of which appellation is borne by Peruvian señoras, and practically called Rosita.

Rosa is found in all kinds of ornamental forms in different countries, and the contractions, or diminutives, of one become the names of another. Thus Rosalia, herself, probably sprang from the endearment Rosel, which together with Rosi is common in Switzerland and the Tyrol; the German diminutive Roschen is met again in the Italian Rosina, French Rosine, English Rosanne; the Rasine, or Rasche, of Lithuania; and Rosetta, the true Italian diminutive, is followed by the French Rosette.

These may be considered as the true and natural forms of Rose. Others were added by fancy and romance after the Teuton signification of fame had been forgotten, and the Latin one of the flower adopted.

Of these, are Rosaura, Rosaclara; in English, Roseclear, Rosalba (a white rose), Rosabella, or Rosabel, all arrant fancy names.

Rosamond has a far more ancient history, but the rose connection must be entirely renounced for her. The first Hrosmond (famous protection, or horse protection) was the fierce chieftainess of the Gepidæ, who was compelled by her Lombard husband to drink to his health in a ghastly goblet formed of the skull of her slaughtered father, and who avenged this crowning insult by a midnight murder.

Even from the fifth century, the period of this tragedy, hers has remained a favourite name among the peasantry of the Jura, the land of the Gepidæ, but it does not appear how it came from them to the Norman Cliffords, by whom it was bestowed upon Fair Rosamond, whose fate has been so strangely altered by ballad lore, and still more strangely by Cervantes, who makes his Persiles and Sigismunda encounter her in the Arctic regions, undergoing a dreary penance among the wehr wolves. Her name, in its supposed interpretation, gave rise to the Latin epigram, _Rosa mundi, sed non Rosa munda_ (the rose of the world, but not a pure rose). The sound of the word, and the popular interest of the ballad, have continued her name in England.

Hroswith, the poetical Frank nun, is certainly famous strength, or famous height, though when softened into Roswitha, she has been taken for a white rose, or a sweet rose.

Rosalind makes her first appearance in _As You Like It_, whether invented by Shakespeare cannot be guessed. If the word be really old, the first syllable is certainly _hrôs_, the last is our English _lithe_, the German _lind_, the Northern _lindre_, the term that has caused the Germans to call the snake the _lindwurm_, or supple worm. The Visigoths considered this litheness as beauty, and thus the word survives in Spanish as _lindo_, _linda_, meaning, indeed, a fair woman, but a soft effeminate man. Yet, the _linda_, meaning fair in Spanish, was reason enough in the sixteenth century for attaching it to many a name by way of ornament, and it is to be apprehended that thus it was that Rosalind came by her name, and possibly Rosaline, whom Romeo deserted for the sake of Juliet. However she began, she has ever since been one of the English roses.

Rosilde, or Roshilda, a German form, is in like manner either really the fame-battle, or else merely _ilda_ tacked by way of ornament to the end of the rose.

Violante is a name occurring in the South of France and the North of Italy and Spain. Whence it originally came is almost impossible to discover. It may very probably be a corruption of some old Latin name such as Valentinus, or, which would be a prettier derivation, it may be from the golden violet, the prize of the troubadours in the courts of love.

The name of the flower is universal; it is _viola_, in Latin, _vas_ in Sanscrit; and in Greek anciently Γιον, but afterwards ἴον, whence later Greeks supposed it to have been named from having formed a garland round the head of Ion, the father of the Ionians.

That _V_ is easily changed to _Y_, was plain in the treatment received by Violante, who was left to that dignified sound only in Spain; but in France was called Yolande, or for affection, Yolette; and in the confusion between _y_ and _j_, figures in our own English histories in the queer-looking form of Joletta. The Scots, with much better taste, imported Yolette as Violet, learning it probably through the connections of the Archers of the Royal Guard, or it may be through Queen Mary’s friends, as Violet Forbes appears in 1571, and I have not found an earlier instance. At any rate, the Scottish love of floral names took hold of it, and the Violets have flourished there ever since. Fialka is both the flower and a family name in Bohemia; as is Veigel in the Viennese dialect. Eva Maria Veigel was the young _danseuse_, called by Maria Theresa, la Violetta, under which designation she came to England, and finally became the excellent wife of Garrick. Whether Viola has ever been a real Italian name I cannot learn, or whether it is only part of the stage property endeared to us by Shakespeare. The masculine Yoland was common at Cambrai in the thirteenth century; Yolante was there used down to the sixteenth.

Viridis (green, or flourishing) was not uncommon among Italian ladies in the fourteenth century, probably in allusion to some romance.

It is much to be feared that the lily, is as little traceable as the rose. There was a Liliola Gonzaga in Italy in 1340, but she was probably a softened Ziliola, or Cecilia. Lilias Ruthven, who occurs in Scotland, in 1557, was probably called from the old romantic poem of _Roswal and Lillian_, which for many years was a great favourite in Scotland. The Lillian of this ballad is Queen of Naples, and thus the name appears clearly traceable to the Cecilias of modern Italy, though it is now usually given in the _sense_ of Lily; the English using Lillian; the Scots, Lillias. Indeed, it is quite possible that these, like Lilla, may sometimes have risen out of contractions of Elizabeth. Leila is a Moorish name, and Lelia is only the feminine of Lælius. On the whole, it may be said that only the Hebrew and Slavonic tongues present us with names _really_ taken from individual flowers.[88]

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Footnote 88:

Michaelis; Munch; Pott; Roscoe, _Boiardo_; Anderson, _Genealogies_;
Douglas, _Peerage of Scotland_; Ellis, _Specimens of Early English
Poetry_; Butler, _Cervantes_; Sismondi.