Personal Blogs

There was an Old Man of St Bees,

Who was stung on the Nose by a Wasp.

When they asked, "Does it hurt?"

He replied. "No, not much."

"I'm so glad it wasn't a Hornet." ^[1]

The modern English name of the insect Vespula vulgaris is of course wasp, but in Old English it was wæps or wæsp, and this goes back via a Germanic line of descent to a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *wapso-. This is also the origin of Latin vespa, and the latter may have influenced the form of modern wasp.

Interestingly there is a dialect version wopsie, which I've always been aware of and occasionally use, and this is surprisingly close to the ancestral root, so much so that it's possible to imagine that if we could travel 5,000 years back in time we might agree with people living then what the insect is called.

The French name is guêpe and if we recall that the circumflex over the 'e' originated as a scribal abbreviation for an 's', we can see it is not all that far from Latin vespa after all. But it's thought that it is a kind of amalgam of two words, both coming from PIE *wapso-, one from Frankish (so via the Germanic route) wapsu and the other from Latin vespa.

As a final aside, the name of the Roman Emperor Vespasian might derive from vespa, and there are Italian people with the surname Vespa (and also a famous brand of scooter) and Wasp is an English surname, although quite rare.

[1] I have quoted this Limerick as I remember it but checking the original by W.S. Gilber (of Gilbert and Sullivan), poking fun at Edward Lear, I see my version is a little different, but even more ridiculous so I've left it as is.

Why is the cloth flannel called flannel?

One theory is that it a borrowing from Welsh gwlanen, 'flannel', which according to the OED is < gwlân, 'wool' (the traditional material for making flannel) and before that < Old Celtic *wlanā. 

Wiktionary, on the other hand, suggests it was borrowed into Middle English from Anglo-Norman flanelle, 'wool', ultimately via Gaulish from the same Old Celtic root *wlanā. This in turn would have come from a Proto-Indo-European root *wele-.

Either way a Celtic origin seems quite likely and of course it's possible both these origins, the Welsh and the Anglo-Norman, might have influenced the Middle English word, flaunneol. Here's a quote from c. 1300 I found in the Middle English Compendium

Flaunneol & bursas

This is earlier than the first quotation given in the OED. I believe Bursas refers to traditional fabrics, silk, velvet and the like, from Bursa in Turkey. 

The same PIE root is also thought to be the origin of wool, < Old English wull, < Proto Germanic *wullō. There are a host of related words in different Indo-European languages, Two interesting ones are Greek lenos, which I'm guessing was wlenos in Archaic Greek, before Greel lost the /w/ consonant, and the doublet lana 'wool' and vellus 'fleece' in Latin.

I don't know why but I've always had a soft spot for the vocative. I wish English still had it. What is it? Basically a special form of a name you use when addressing someone or something.

A really nice and surprising example, if you didn't know about it, is Scottish Gaelic Seumas, 'James', which becomes the vocative A Sheumais when you directly address someone of that name. This is pronounced uh-haymish and now you know where the name Hamish comes from.

I don't know any Gaelic but I know some Greek. In Greek, when speaking directly to someone you use the vocative. For some names the end of the name may change, for example if you address Kostas it will be as Kosta, Yiannis as Yianni. Other names may not change their spelling but are still regarded as vocatives; for example Maria or Anna, and I think that speakers, even non-native ones,  sense them as vocatives

This can be confusing to people learning Greek, who when hearing someone address Kostas, using the vocative Kosta of course, tend to assume he is called Kosta when he's actually called Kostas (hope you're keeping up!) Even more confusing, if you speak about Kostas, you must refer to him as 'The Kostas', Ο Κοστας.

The vocative is also used when addressing someone by a title-based form. For example 'Doctor' in Greek is Yiatros but when I address the doctor I have to say Yiatre. I could even speak to my dog (skylos) in the vocative, Kaló skyle!, 'Good dog'.

Originally all the branches of the large Indo-European family used word endings to mark what role a noun played in a sentence, for example being the object of an action ('I patted the dog')'or being a possessor ('the dog's dinner) or a recipient ('I gave the dog a bone'). There were eight different 'cases' altogether, including our vocative. 

Over time some branches of the Indo European family have eroded or abolished the case system in favour of things like word order, and nowadays cases have largely disappeared from all the Germanic languages bar Icelandic and German itself, and all the Romance languages bar Romanian. This included the poor vocative, now only hanging on in Icelandic and Romanian respectively. 

But it's alive and well in Greek, as we have seen and in many other branches as well. An interesting exception is Russian, which unlike most Slavic languages lacks a vocative. It was abolished by the Russian government in 1918 on the grounds that it was archaic and little used. However, and this is fascinating, an informal 'neo-vocative' has apparently emerged in Modern Russian. for example Sasha would become Sash.