Chapter 34 Austin Plant - Plant Family History Group

• though no genealogical evidence would necessarily be expected for scattered bastards, there
is none to prove that Plant and Plantt descended from Plantegenest and Plantagenet - a less
presumptuous possibility is that a lesser mortal, perhaps one in awe of Plantegenest, fathered
offspring with Plant as a surname as this held to the Welsh ‘offspring’ meaning of Plant and
also matched the local Child by-name; in addition, the spelling Plantt suggests a possible
allegiance to Plantegenest’s realm.
Though this leaves just a hint of a possible cultural connection between the names Plantagenet
and Plant, it is important. This is because the development of the Plantagenet surname itself is
controversial and the Plant surname can provide a few extra clues.
The name “Plantagenet” was originally spelled Plante Genest or Plantegenest or Plantaginet.
It originated with Geoffrey of Anjou, father of King Henry II who ascended the English throne in
1154. It is most commonly claimed that the name arose because Geoffrey wore a sprig of broom in
his bonnet though perhaps otherwise that he planted it to improve his hunting covers or used broom
to scourge himself. Its significance has been said to relate to its golden flower though, in my latest
Nomina publication, I have postulated that it related culturally to the earlier name Plantapilosa and,
thereby, to the development of contemporary belief in the vegetative soul.
Though the name Plantagenet has been retroactively applied to the descendants of Geoffrey
Plante Genest of Anjou, there is no contemporary evidence that the royal family used this surname
before the mid fifteenth century; and so evidence for the intervening years of the development of
similar names, such as Plant, is amongst the best available evidence when seeking onomastic clues
for the significance of the Plantagenet surname. Recent Y-DNA and other evidence suggests a
generative meaning, offspring, to Plant [J.S. Plant (2005) Nomina 28, pp. 115-33] and this suggests
that generative aspects of the vegetable soul could have played a key role in the development of
the Plantagenet surname. This is discussed further in: J.S. Plant (2007) ‘The tardy adoption of the
Plantagenet surname’, Nomina, to appear in Vol. 30.
The Plant name in Nomina publications
by Dr John S Plant (Member No 52) March 2007
Nomina is the ‘Journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland’; it has been
published annually since 1977. Its main focus has been on place names though it sometimes accepts
articles about personal names and surnames. As mentioned earlier, I published an article in Volume
28 of that journal:
John S Plant (2005) Modern methods and a controversial surname: Plant, Nomina, 28, pp. 115-
133.
Since Nomina is a recognised academically and since the subject matter of my article included
some semantics and metaphysics, the article has also been accepted on the eprints web-site for the
Cognitive Sciences, where it appears at:
http://cogprints.org/5462/
By the way, the full text that currently appears there is not quite the final version; just a few changes
were made after I sent the electronic text in to the editor of Nomina for printing.
In June 2006, I asked the editor if she would be interested in a follow-on article about the
Plantagenet name; and, after I had put my submission together and the journal referees had peer
reviewed it, it was accepted in February. This second article, though finalised in January, will not
appear in print until around the end of this year, with the title:
John S Plant (2007) The tardy adoption of the Plantagenet surname, Nomina, 30, pp. 57-84.
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