pdf 25 MB - BSBI Archive

ON VERNACULAK NAMES. 335
Mr. Collins, whose honest labours in the little-cultivated field of
economic botany are worthy of all encouragement, should be the last
to depreciate the value of popular names. A closer study than he
has made of them will doubtless convince him that they are of greater
service to the working botanist than he seems at present inclined to
concede. Besides the uses pointed out in my preface, above quoted,
they furnish important data for the history of plants, and, in many
cases, they serve as a guide to their native land, or the countiy where
their uses were first discovered. We may search ancient records for
the place whence the Sugar-cane was derived ; no hints are conveyed ;
but in looking to the etymology of the name we recognize in " Sugar,
Azucar, Zucker, Saccharum," only so many corruptions of a Sanskrit
root, qarkara, diiecting our ideas into a quite new channel of inquiry,
transporting us from the banks of the Thames, the Po, or the Khine,
to the sacred waters of the Ganges ; fi*om the nineteenth centuiy to
the remotest period of Indian history.
Many names are so euphonious, and constructed so cosmopolitically,
—if that expression be admissible,—that they are readily received into
different languages. Hence the extensive range which some enjoy,
and their numerous modifications. From an opposite character a
great, or rather the greater number, is very local. Such names as
Coatzontecoxochitl will never pass beyond the lips of the nation that
invented them ; their very nature is opposed to it. Yet we must not
condemn them on that account. However barbarous they may appear
to those unacquainted with the language to which they belong, they
assume a more favourable aspect in the eyes of the initiated, and, it is
hardly necessary to add, are pronounced by them with as much ease
as we do those belonging to our own native tongue.
How many vernacular names are formed is illustrated when a people
exchange one country for another. The immigrant aiTives at his new
home full of high expectation ; he not only hopes to have left behind
all the discomforts of bis native land, but also trusts to meet again
objects which from childhood have been dear to him. Everything is
examined,—the stones, the plants, the animals. The trees under the
shade of which he used to sit, the fruits which in his bovish davs he
gathered are sought for. At last they are found. But lo ! on
closer
examination they turn out to be similar, but uot identical. He is dis-
appointed, and his disappointment is for ever recorded in such names