Raholeun wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 12:46 pm
How rare are eponyms for common nouns cross-linguistically? I was leafing through a dictionary of Pitkern, and an astounding number of nouns and verbs had an eponymic etymology noted. Which got me wondering if eponyms are not just an overenthousiastic case of folk etymology on the part of the language informants.
Raholeun wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 1:34 pmFair point. But given that various generations each have their own social groups, I would expect such terms to die out or be replaced frequently, rather than survive for +- 150 years.
Those little anecdotal etymologies are always a nice read nonetheless.
Aha! I was able to find these ancient Roman eponyms of the gods' names I derived some years ago, mostly from the Oxford Latin Dictionary for Latin plus other sources for the comments about Romance.
Classical Latin used the names of the gods as eponyms. In general, any statue could be referred to directly by the represented god's name, say, "the Ceres at that corner", but besides that, the following lists include substitutions like that for particular things.
Apollo
- the Sun (often so with the name
Phoebus adapted from Greek too)
- the temple of Apollo at Actium (built by Augustus)
- the planet Mercury
Ceres
- wheat
- bread
- food
Diana
- hunting
- the Moon
Flora
- the time when flowers blossom in Spring
- (From the 18th century, what we call the "flora" of a place in English. This was originally a reference to the ancient goddess by Enlightenment scientists/philosophers.)
Janus
- the month of January
- as
Janus Quirinus (Quirinus = the name of Romulus' god form), a specific shrine in Rome's forum whose doors would open during times of major wars
- any of the three archways on the eastern side of Rome's forum, frequented by loan sharks and merchants
- (also any door, but etymologically the name of the god comes
from this old word for "door", not the other way around)
Juno
- the planet Venus
- the Roman Emperor's wife
- any man's wife, often as a joke
- as
Juno inferna "Juno from below", the goddess Proserpina (~ Greek Persephone) who is the wife of Orcus/Pluto
- in the plural (
Junones), a woman's personal protective spirit (men instead were said to be protected by their
genius, i.e. the spirit of their
gens or patrilineal lineage)
- as
Juno Moneta, a mint (building to forge coins in), a stamp or mold to make coins with, or the money produced itself ("Moneta" was a traditional title of Juno's among the Romans. The original meaning of this title is lost, as Romans falsely reinterpreted it as a translation of the name of the Greek goddess Mnemosyne (literally "Memory"), the mother of the Muses, due to the verb
monere 'to remind sb of sth'. Greeks apparently used to say Mnemosyne was Hera/Juno's
aunt.)
Jupiter
- the sky
- the air
- wind
- the planet Jupiter
- the Nile river (by being identified with the Egyptian god Osiris)
- any powerful god, e.g.
Juppiter stygius "Jupiter of the Styx river" and
Juppiter niger "black Jupiter" for Orcus/Pluto,
Juppiter antiquus "ancient Jupiter" for Saturn
- the Roman emperor as a 2nd-person title in panegyrics
- (also attested once in Plautus in a moment where a man sarcastically says hi to another as a joke: "Somebody's talking nearby, and I don't know who it is." "O, my Jupiter-on-Earth, your feasting partner is talking to you!" "O Saturio, it's great you've visited me now..." --
Persa I.3)
Liber (~ Greek Dionysius, Bacchus)
- wine
Mars
- war
- battles
- a style of battling, e.g.
mars pedestris '(the concept of) fighting on foot'
- a leader's force of arms
- a person's war spirit
- the advantage of fortune of a faction in war
- an army, or at a smaller size a troop
- a fleet of ships
- the planet Mars
- contentions of law at a city's forum
- a person's own prowess to do something
- also attested once in reference to Emperor Diocletian
Mercury
- the planet Mercury
Minerva
- the occupation of spinning or weaving
- a person's mind in terms of their memory, intelligence, taste, personal habits or tendencies
- as
Minerva Palatina "Minerva of the Palatine Hill", the high Roman state, e.g.
Palatinae cultor Minervae (Martial V.5.1) "worshipper of Palatine Minerva" in reference to one Sextus who was a librarian for the Emperor
Neptunus
- the sea, as either its surface or its depths
- fish from the sea
- (This word survives into Old French as
netun, by then the name of a bestiary sea monster and also a mischievous spirit of rivers and seas at night. The
Trésor de la langue française says this word is eggcorned as
nuiton likely after
nuit 'night', and then eggcorned again as
luiton probably after
luitier 'to struggle', remodelled as
luitin probably after
hutin 'quarrelsome, troublemaker', becoming modern
lutin by now 'night imp, pixie' (a small mischievous demon). The
Trésor mentions the existence of a sermon by 7th-century French bishop St. Eligius telling people to stop believing in pagan spirits like Orcus, Neptune and Diana.)
Orcus (also known by his adapted name from Greek, Pluto, or as Dis Pater "The Rich Father", but these two names are not used eponymously)
- death
- the underworld, e.g.
fauces Orci 'the entrance of the underworld' (lit. "Orcus' jaws")
- (This word survives in French/Italian as
ogre/orco, a man-eating giant. In Spanish, it survives as
huerco, at first a synonym of the Devil, nowadays the literary figure of a depressed man crying in the dark; in Mexico, also any teenager or young man; in the traditional Spanish of the southwestern United States, also little boys.)
Saturn
- the planet Saturn
Venus
- a woman who inspires love in one
- Julius Caesar, who claimed descent from her through Aeneas
- the planet Venus
- the best throw in dicing with
tali, when each of the four shows a different face
- vegetables
- sexual charm, the quality of attracting sexual love
- (without sexual connotation) charm, grace
- sexual appetite, sex (attested as both a concept abstraction and intercourse itself), for both humans or animals
Vesta
- her sacred fire, kept alive by the Vestal Virgins
- any hearth
Vulcan
- fire, flames
- (In the the Middle Ages, it became popular in Romance languages and Arabic to refer to the volcanos of northeastern Sicily with the name of this god, due to the ancient belief that Mt. Etna was Vulcan's forge. The Ancient Romans did not distinguish mountains from volcanos, referring to either type of geological feature as a
mons 'mount'. In fact, they didn't distinguish lava from fire either, and even modern European languages didn't gain a word for "lava" until the 18th century with the development of vulcanology and its closer observations of active volcanos.)