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DOI :10.30842/ielcp230690152267
Alexander Nikolaev
LATIN FARFERUM 'COLTSFOOT': A TRACE OF INDO-EUROPEAN POETIC LANGUAGE IN LATIN PLANT NOMENCLATURE?*
Характерной чертой всех растений, принадлежащих к семейству астровых, является сложное соцветие, внешне напоминающее звезду с отходящими от нее лучами (ср. лат. Asteraceae); именно эта внешняя особенность может быть отражена в латинском названии мать-и-мачехи: лат. (диал.) farferum < *bheh2s-o-bhor-o- может быть сопоставлено с наименованиями утренней звезды в других и.-е. традициях, ср. др.-гр. Фшофоро; а также формульное выражение *b eh2es- *bher-'нести свет', тесно связанное не только с Зарей / Эос, но и с Диоскурами / Ашвинами (Alc. 34.13 фао; фероухе;), являющимися на небе в виде утренней и вечерней звезды.
Ключевые слова: близнечный миф, ботаническая номенклатура, латинский язык, Плавт, сравнительная мифология, этимология.
The rare Latin word for coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara, мать-и-мачеха) is variously transmitted as farferum (Plaut. Poen. 478), farfarum (Plaut. fr. 62 de Melo) or (certainly corrupted) farfenum (Fest. Paul. 78.25 Lindsay)1. The botanical identification is supported by Plin. 24.135 (chamaeleucen apud nos farfarum sive farfu-gium vocant2) as well as by Late Latin glosses where farfara is defined as ungula caballina (CGL 3.563.47; 546.35), viz. 'coltsfoot' 3. Descendants of the Latin word are still preserved in the dialects of Toscana and Emilia Romana (REW 3195), and thanks to Linnaeus the form farfara has been canonized in modern botanical nomenclature4.
* I would like to thank Brent Vine (UCLA) and Michael Weiss (Cornell University) for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. Naturally, all errors of fact or judgment are solely my own responsibility.
1 For a detailed discussion of these attestations see Rost 1836: 225-228.
For the identification of Gk. xapaiXeÚKn (Lat. chamaeleuce) as coltsfoot cf. Ps.-Dsc.3.112 (Fol. 102v of illuminated "Salamanca Dioscorides" (Salamanca, University Library, 2659) is available online: http://dioscorides.usal.es/p2.php?numero=515).
3 Alphita, a Middle English glossary of herbs, translates farfara as ungula caballina, angl. feldhoue (Mowat 1887: 21).
4 See Linnaeus 1753: 865.
The word farferum (ala?) is isolated in Latin5 and its etymology remains obscure . The old idea that the word is a compound of far 'grain, groats' andferre 'carry' is still found in some botanical handbooks7, but has rightly been discarded in etymological literature along with the similarly improbable derivation from Italic *farfa 'beard' proposed by Bruch 1917 (see LEW 457; DELL 217) 8. Since medial -f- ostensibly points to a non-Roman provenance of the word, and plant names are easily borrowed, the origin offarferum has been sought in Etruscan substrate9; while in principle borrowing always remains a possibility, there is no independent support for this hypothesis 10. Finally, it is worth noting that the vowel alternation in farferum l farfarum does not necessarily point to a substratum word: -e- is the expected outcome of any short vowel in non-initial open syllables in the position before r (*peparai > peperi, *kenises > cineris, etc. - see Weiss 2009: 116; Kazansky 2017: 49-50), but since the consonants in the first and second syllables of the word are completely identical in our case, vowel assimilation leading to a creation of fully reduplicated form is very likely11.
Nothing in principle stands in the way of searching for an Indo-European etymology offarferum, and the physical appearance of the plant provides a potentially promising place to start12. The main
5 Ever since antiquity, the word for coltsfoot has been compared with the river name Farfarus (Ov. Met. 14.330), latinized as Fabaris in Verg. Aen. 7.715 and likely related to Faliscan gentilic Fafarn- (see Giacomelli 1963: 191). That the river is named after a plant is possible yet unprovable; under any analysis the potamonym does not stand in the way of the proposal advanced in this paper.
6 See Andre 1956: 133-4; Ernout 1957: 215; Genaust 1996: 245 ("etymologie unsicher").
See, for instance, Madaus 1938; hence also the Russian term муконосница (Kaden, Terent'eva 1975: 66, 158).
8 The form farfugium in Pliny (codd. farrarifugium vel farfarfugium) is best analyzed as a product of learned etymology: since Latin and Greek names of the plant refer to its medicinal use in relieving cough (tussilago to tussis 'cough', P^xl0V to 'id.'), the compound in -fugium was supposed to convey the same idea of escaping cough, cf. the herb-name febrifugia (this word is first attested in Ps.-Apul. Herb. 35, which makes an actual contamination between Plautine farferum and Late Latin febrifugia unlikely, pace Bader 1962: 75).
9 See Bertoldi 1937: 161; Alessio 1951: 127.
10
For a skeptical assessment of the Etruscan loanword theory see Breyer 1993: 505 n. 38.
11 This was already observed by Meier-Lubke 1884: 207.
12 On the connection between a plant's name and its outer appearance see Grosheva 2009: 324.
feature of coltsfoot is its radially symmetrical arrangement of flowers in a pattern resembling a star or sun; in fact, this is true for all members of the large family of Asteraceae, the floral heads of which are characteristically star-shaped. The uncanny similarity between the rays of the sun and the "petals" of another member of Asteraceae is reflected in its name sunflower (Helianthus / подсолнечник / Sonnenblume). Based on the hypothesis that Latin farfarum / farferum reflects the same semantic idea, I propose that the first member of this compound goes back to Indo-European *bheh2- 'to shine' (LIV 68-69).
This root shows very distinct poetic properties across several traditions. As E. Campanile has shown, the standing epithet of the goddess of the Dawn (*h2ewsos) in Indo-Iranian poetic language is 'shining in all directions': usas- vibhati-, usafyhdm viuuaitim (Campanile 1987). His results were confirmed by U. Roesler who has shown in her careful study that the verbal root bha- 'to shine' and its nominal derivatives (such as Vedic s-stem bhas- 'light', metrically: bhaas-) are very closely associated with Usas in the Rigveda (Roesler 1997: 83-90). As we step outside Indo-Iranian, we find an exact cognate of Vedic bhas- in Latin poetic word iubar 'first light of day; morning star' from *diu-bkeh2-es- 'bringing the light to the sky'13; again, the connection with dawn is unmistakable (cf. Var. L. 7.76 iubar dicitur stella lucifer). In Greek, too, phrases like 'Ню? гприфааооа, фа^оАо? Апю?, фасууа^ Aoo? (Pi. N. 6.52) or фао? Hon? ^piysvsin? show a close tie between Ню? and the root фа- (*bW).14
Furthermore, it appears that the s-stem *bheh2e/os- (Vedic bhas-, Latin (iu)bar, Greek фао?15) was used together with the verb *bher-'to carry' in formulaic collocations of Indo-European date. In Greek we find this formulaic juncture not only in Homeric фою? фгро1 '(Eos) brings light (to men and immortals)'16, but also in the name of the morning star, Фюофоро?: the mythological representations of
1 3
See Dunkel 1997 with references to his predecessors.
14 See the recent collection of material by Calin 2017: 67-8.
15 Greek 9ao;, ^aeoc; (distracted 90©;, contracted 9©;) goes back to Proto-Greek *bhaue/os- which, in turn, must be a replacement of an earlier *bhae/os- with a hiatus resulting from the loss of the laryngeal in
*bhek2e/os-, see Peters 1993: 106-7.
16 r Matasovic 1996: 84 plausibly compared RV 1.92.13ab usas tac citram a
bhara / asmabhyam vajimvati "o Usas, rich in horses, bring us that
brightness" under the assumption that the word citra- 'light' here is a
substitute for bhas- (both roots are linked in Savitar's epithet citrabhanu-).
the morning and evening stars are the Dioscuri who are described as ^spovxs^ in Alc. 34.1317.
We can now return to the Latin word for coltsfoot presumably named after its star-like shape18: the name of this species of Asteraceae may be analyzed as a counterpart of Greek Oroo^opo^ and a continuant of Indo-European formula *bheh2es- *bher- 'to carry light (of dawn)'. Under this hypothesis farferum is a neuter19 of *farfer 'carrying light; morning star', either a rural Latin word (with -bh- > f-20) or a remake of expectable *farber by analogy to other Latin compounds in -fer (first and foremost, its synonym lucifer)?1 The word can be back-reconstructed as follows: *farfer / *farber, -a, -um < *farferos (with vowel weakening) < *farforos
22 23 24
(with Exon's Law ) < *faroforos (with rhotacism ) < *fasoforos < IE (transponate) *bheh2s-o-bhor-o-, a verbal governing compound with *bheh2es- 'light (of dawn)' as its first member.
1 7
For mythological and poetic background of Alcaeus' фао^ фёроуте^ I refer to my earlier studies, Nikolaev 2012a and 2012b.
18 It is possible that the word originally referred to all kinds of daisies.
19 Perhaps originating in the ellipsis of *farferum grämen or a similar phrase.
0 On sources of Latin word-medial -f from *-bh- see Weiss 2009: 75 n. 26.
21
In theory it is also possible to explain *farfer as the expectable outcome of *fasoforos either in Faliscan or in Sabellic since in these dialects wordmedial *-bh- likewise gives -f-; however, the relative chronology of rhotacism and various rounds of syncope both in Faliscan and in Sabellic is too unclear to warrant this hypothesis.
22 See Exon 1906; Sihler 1995: 70, cf. e.g. *dek.si.ter.os (Gk. Ss^ixspo^) > dexter 'right'; for syncope after a long initial syllable cf. *sui.no.ka.put > sinciput 'fool'.
23
As is well known, no strict rules can be written for Latin syncope different rounds of which happened at several times in the history of Latin; in particular, Weiss 2009: 123 points out that rounds of syncope operated both before and after rhotacism, citing pond 'put' < *posino (cf. sind 'let') vs. ornus 'ash tree' < *osinos (cf. Russian ясень). Therefore examples that may suggest that Exon's Law operated before rhotacism (such as
*ma.gi.so.mos > *mag.si.mos > *maksimos > mäximus 'the greatest') do not invalidate the solution proposed in this paper. It is also worth noting that in a tetrasyllabic word with two internal open syllables syncope targets the syllable that has a liquid consonant in the onset, including r < *s by rhotacism, even if it is the third and not the second syllable, cf. *ue.tu.si.nos > *ue.tu.ri.nos > *ue.te.ri.nos > veternus 'morbid state of torpor, old age' or *di.ue.si.nos > *di.ue.ri.nos > diurnus 'occurring in the day-time'.
24 The length of the vowel in the initial syllable of farferum cannot be ascertained; of course, *bhh2s -o-b or-o- with a zero-grade stem allomorph of *bheh2es- 'light (of Dawn)' would give *fasoforom > farferum.
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Summary: this paper argues that Latin farferum 'coltsfoot; Tussilago farfara' owns its name to its symmetrical arrangement of floral heads in a pattern resembling a star or sun, characteristic of all members of the family of Asteraceae; it is proposed that the (rustic) Latin word goes back to *bheh2s -o-bhor-o- 'light bringer, morning star' (~ Greek ФюGфôpoç 'morning star'). In Indo-European poetic traditions the formula *bheh2es-*bher- 'to carry light' is used of the Divine Twins, visualized precisely as the morning and evening stars.
Keywords: botanical nomenclature, comparative mythology, Divine Twins, etymology, Latin, Plautus.
