OPTIMA Newsletter 38

Publications
names in modern language are used by many,
perhaps increasingly so, and lists such as the
present French-Latin and Latin-French “dictionary”
for Belgian plants correspond to a
real need.
Jacques Lambinon in his introduction
makes the important distinction, too often
ignored, between “popular” and “learned”
common language names. The former are
primarily the domain of linguistics and ethnographic
studies, the latter are often those
used in school floras. Surprisingly, there are
countries in which there is no tradition for
the second category, such as Greece, Turkey
and perhaps Spain; whereas the “learned”
names have their stronghold in countries
such as France, Britain, and most prominently
in the German language domain. It
would be interesting to examine, in an historical
perspective, why this is so. It would
also be worthwhile to explore the origin of
this, so to say, parallel nomenclature. The
earliest source of German “learned” plant
names of which I am aware is Carl Ludwig
Willdenow’s “Species plantarum” (1797-
1810), where they are consistently given.
They appear to be German translations of
the Latin name, and their purpose may well
have been, not so much to be used for communication
but to explain to the reader the
meaning of the Latin names.
However this may be, I am convinced
that the “learned” common language names
of plants have an important function, and I
would encourage authors of Floras of countries
lacking them to establish their tradition.
W.G.
137. 136BMoustapha NEHME – Dictionnaire
étymologique de la flore du Liban.
Noms scientifiques et leur étymologie.
Noms français, anglais et arabes. Noms
arabes translittérés. – Librairie du Liban,
Beyrouth, 2000. 368 + 48 pages;
hard cover with dust jacket.
138. 137BMoustapha NEHMÉ – Etymogical dictionary
of Syrian flora. Scientific names
and their etymology. Arabic, English and
French names. – Librairie du Liban, Beirut,
2008 (ISBN 978-9953-86-410-5).
456 pages; hard cover with dust jacket.
Both volumes are of similar layout and
widely overlapping content, to the extent to
which the floras of the two countries, Lebanon
and Syria, coincide. Syria, with its much
larger surface area, has a somewhat richer
flora: 3109 species, as compared to 2607 for
Lebanon. The numbered entries are 3949
and 3390, respectively. The numerical difference
between species and entries corresponds
to the number of genera (each genus
having its own entry), which means that no
infraspecific taxa are mentioned.
As the title implies, the books have a
dual function. The first is etymological. For
each generic name and specific epithet the
derivation is given. The etymological information
is carefully researched, detailed, and
I found it to be very useful. Besides, its applicability
is by no means geographically as
restricted as one might rashly conclude from
the book titles: the area of many genera is
large, and as to epithets, the same have often
been used in other genera all around the
world (as there is an alphabetical index to
epithets at the end, the information can be
easily found, irrespective of genus). When
perusing the book, I immediately found lots
of information of which I was unaware, e.g.,
that Allium derives from a Celtic word, Carthamus
from Aramaic, Datura from Sanskrit,
Marrubium from Hebrew, and Taraxacum
from Persian.
The books’ second purpose is to serve
as a polyglot (Latin-French-English-Arabic)
dictionary of pant names. As is usual for well
designed polyglot dictionaries, translation is
possible from any of these languages into
any other, e.g., from French to English or vice
versa, by using the language indexes at the
end, which refer to the entry number. Of
course, it is the Arabic names that are most
valuable. I know of no other comparably
complete, botanically reliable source of such
(72) OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 2009