海角大神

A friend asks: Why do 鈥淎marillo,鈥� as in Texas, and 鈥渁maryllis,鈥� as in those bulbs in a box at the supermarket this time of year, have a 鈥渃ommonality of sounds?鈥� Are they related?

The short answer is no. But the longer answer is more interesting. I鈥檝e been thinking about the current Henry Louis Gates Jr. celebrity-genealogy TV series, 鈥淔inding Your Roots.鈥� My big takeaway from genealogical research is that Everyone Is Related to Everyone Else. An important secondary message, though, is that some things that appear closely related, aren鈥檛, and other things that don鈥檛, are.聽

Before it was the name of a group of plants, Amaryllis was a feminine given name, 鈥渙f a country-girl in Theocritus, Ovid, and Virgil,鈥� according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (鈥淵es, of course, Theocritus,鈥� I hear you murmuring, Dear Reader.) The great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-78), needing a name for a particular 鈥済enus of autumn-flowering bulbous plants,鈥� to quote the OED further, evidently just plucked 鈥淎maryllis鈥� from classical literature and pressed it into service.

The letter 鈥測鈥� often points to Greek roots. The illo suffix in amarillo, though, is simply a standard Spanish diminutive.

An armadillo, thus, is literally 鈥渁 little armored thing.鈥� One accounting for amarillo is that it means 鈥渁 bit of bitterness.鈥�

The Online Etymology Dictionary explains amarillo as a 鈥渘ame given to several species of American trees, from Spanish, from Arabic anbari 鈥榶ellow, amber-colored,鈥� from anbar, 鈥榓mber.鈥欌�娾�娾�娾��

Amarillo, the city, the dictionary surmises, 鈥渕ay be so called from the color of the banks of a nearby stream.鈥� But is there a connection to Anbar Province in Iraq?

Amber came into English, from Arabic in the mid-14th century to mean what we now call ambergris, or perfume made therefrom. The dictionary explains ambergris as 鈥渁 wax-like substance of ashy colour, found floating in tropical seas, a morbid secretion from the intestines of the sperm-whale. Used in perfumery, and formerly in cookery.鈥� Yum.

The dictionary adds, 鈥淚n Europe, the sense was extended, inexplicably, to fossil resins from the Baltic ... which has become the main sense as the use of ambergris has waned.鈥澛�

These resins are the hard orange-yellow substance used in jewelry. Ambergris came into use to distinguish whales鈥� 鈥済ray amber鈥� from jewelers鈥� 鈥測ellow amber.鈥�

鈥淔orever Amber鈥� was a racy historical novel, set in the 17th century and published in 1944. Scandalous in its day, it nonetheless led to many girls鈥� being named 鈥淎mber鈥� after its title character. 鈥淎nbar鈥� is a Muslim girl鈥檚 name, meaning 鈥減erfume鈥� or 鈥渁mbergris.鈥�

Anbar Province in Iraq, though, gets its name from a similar-looking but different Persian word that, according to the Tourism in Iraq website, means 鈥済ranaries.鈥�

By the time you read this, Professor Gates may have shown how the actress Julianne Moore is related to, who knows, Muhammad Ali or Mahatma Gandhi. As with people, so with words: There are connections 鈥� just not always as you鈥檇 expect.