24 July 2020
A condom is, of course, a prophylactic sheath, usually made of rubber, worn on the penis to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of infection. We all know what it is, but where the name comes from is a mystery. All we know is that the name appears in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Various sheath-like devices have been used, with varying degrees of success, as prophylactics since antiquity, but in the late seventeenth century people began using such devices made out of animal intestines, and these can be considered the first modern condoms. There are various references to them, without using the word condom, during that period. For instance, there is this undated handbill from the early eighteenth century advertising the wares of a certain Mrs. Philips:
She has thirty-five years experience, in the business of making and selling machines, commonly called implements of safety, which secures the health of her customers: she has likewise great choice of skins and bladders.
And there is this scene from William Burnaby’s 1701 play The Ladies Visiting-Day, in which the character Lady Lovetoy explains the new fashions and moralities to the elderly Sir Testy Dolt:
Lov. The first thing they’ll do is will be to strip ‘em of their Country Customs, and instead of the Aukward Games of Whisk and Lue teach ‘em the more agreeable ones of Piquet, Basset, and Ombre.
Sir Test. And instead of the clownish qualities of Modesty and Silence, teach ‘em the courtly ones of being very coquet, and very noisy.
Lov. Buy all their Silks at an India house, their Looking-glass at Gumly’s, and all their Tea at Phillips’s.
Sir Test. At Phillips’es! why there’s a great deal of plain dealing in your Ladyship’s Conversation!
Lov. O’tis the new manner among us to make no secrets; our Dressing, Painting, Gallantrys, are all publick, and now a Lady wou’d no more have a Lover unknown, than she wou’d a Beauty.
Sir Test. (Aside) A very modest Age, By-Gingo! but there is a Westminster-hall to relieve honest Men, and call Cuckold-makers to account——Then I suppose Modesty is a sort of want of Breeding among the Ladies?
Lov. A fine Woman shou’d be above the concerns of little People; to apprehend indecency is to make it, and however free our Conversation is, a certain Assurance still justifies our words, whereas to be shock’d and to blush is the Education of a Boarding School.
Sir Testy Dolt is shocked by Lady Lovetoy’s mention of Phillips, perhaps conflating the well-known London tea house named the Green Canister, run by a different Mrs. Phillips, with the other Mrs. Philips, the purveyor of prophylactic sheaths. Or perhaps the two women were one and the same, which is suggested by Lady Lovetoy’s attitude toward sexuality.
So, it is clear that condoms, as we know them today, were available in London by 1701, but the word condom doesn’t seem to have been.
The word itself follows in the next few years. (See below regarding the claim in Wikipedia for an earlier date.) It first appears in regard to John Campbell, the 2nd Duke of Argyle, who allegedly brought a quondam with him to Edinburgh from London and proceeded to use it with gusto. We have a nineteenth-century transcript of a document from Argyle’s papers, the original now lost, that reads:
He wes made comm[issione]r to the parl[iamen]t, 6th March 1705. He brought along with him a certaine instrument called a Quondam, q[ue]ch occasioned ye debauching of a great number of Ladies of qualitie, and oy[e]r young gentlewomen.
But we don’t know when the source document was written. The copy is from the nineteenth century in the hand of Charles Sharpe and was published in 1888. From the spellings, it is obvious that Sharpe is copying a much older, Scottish document. The wes for was, oyer for other, and ye for the indicate it is well before the nineteenth century, and the quech spelling of which marks it as Scottish. The source document obviously postdates 6 March 1705, but exactly when is uncertain.
But we can say for certain the word was around by the next year. Condum appears in a 1706 poem written by John Hamilton Belhaven, A Scots Answer to a British Vision. Argyle was in favor of the Act of Union between England and Scotland, and Belhaven was not. Belhaven accuses Argyle of not only being a traitor to Scotland but, in his use of condom, also of being a symbol of newfangled decadence in his disregarding of the virtuous quondam (virtuous past):
When Reasoning’s answer’d
By Seconded Votes,
And Speeches are Banter’d
By Outfield Turn-Coats,
Then Sirenge and Condum
Come both in Request,
When Virtuous Quondam
Is Treated in Jest.
So, we have a date of first appearance of the word in 1705–06, but still no clue as to why it’s called a condom.
Etymology unknown may be an accurate conclusion, but it is unsatisfying to many. In such cases, invented etymologies tend to arise, and condom is no exception. There are multiple suggestions as to the word’s origin, none with solid evidence behind them. The earliest and probably most widespread and persistent is that it is named for its inventor, a certain doctor, or sometimes colonel, named Condom, Condon, or something similar.
The idea that it is named for its inventor dates to at least 1708, very shortly after the word’s appearance. An anonymous satire, titled Almonds for Parrots: or, a Soft Answer to a Scurrilous SATYR, call’d, St. James’s Park. With a Word or Two in Praise of Condons is published that year, and it reads, in part:
O matchless Condon! thou’st secur’d thy Fame
To last as long as Condon is a Name.
Such mighty Things are by they Influence done,
Thou ha’st the foremost of this Age out-run.
Vulcan himself has been out-stript by thee,
Thou Patron of the Paphian Diety.
For Mars’s Heroes, shining Arms he made;
But thou for Venus, takes up Vulcan’s Trade.
Superior much, thou do’st the God out-shine.
Achilles Armour cannot match with thine.
Thine makes the Knight invulnerable still;
And Condon triumph’s o’er Apollo’s Skill.
Sons of the Sun, no more in vain pretend
To heal what all your Art can never mend.
No more to Hermes mighty Skill aspire;
Condon has quench’d the heat of Venus’s Fire,
And yet preserv’d the Flame of Love’s Desire.
Hail! mighty Leader of the Condon Crew,
Who charge the Fair, arm’d Cap-a pee, like you!
To noble A——le first you did impart
The secret Knowledge of your saving Art:
Which, had you taught to O——r——ry before,
You’d sav’d his Calfs, not such as Israel did adore,
But such as he has offer’d to his Wh——.
[...]
Long had these Æsculapian Heroes vex’d
Their leisure Thoughts, and long their Minds perplex
To search the Cause why Nature had assign’d
To Men and Brutes, a Gut the Learn’d call, Blind;
Till Condon, for the Great Invasion fam’d,
Found out its use, and after him ‘twas nam’d,
Long will thy Story last, and thou reman
Dear to posterity, a Matchless Man,
Like him at Ephesus, that burnt the sacred Fane.
The A——le here is undoubtedly Argyle, and the Wh—— is obviously whore. The O——r——ry is probably a reference to Charles Boyle, the fourth Earl of Orrery, or perhaps to his older brother Lionel, the third earl, who had died in 1703. The poem implies some misfortune befell Orrery which would have been avoided had he used a condom.
Another reference to an inventor, albeit one that does not mention his name because to do so is “obscene,” comes from the pages of the broadsheet The Tatler of 13 May 1709. The source is important to understanding this reference, as The Tatler was often filled with gossip and invented, satirical stories. It cannot be considered a reliable source for facts:
Not but there are considerable Men appear in all Ages, who, for some eminent Quality or Invention, deserve the Esteem and Thanks of the Publick. Such a Benefactor is a Gentleman of this House [i.e., Will’s Coffee House], who is observ’d by the Surgeons with much Envy; for he has invented an Engine for the Prevention of Harms by Love-Adventures, and has, by great Care and Application, made it an Immodesty to name his Name. This Act of Self-denial has gain’d this worthy Member of the Commonwealth a great Reputation. Some Lawgivers have departed from their Abodes for ever, and commanded the Observation of their Laws till their Return; others have us’d other Artifices to fly the Applause of their Merit; but this Person shuns Glory with greater Address, and has by giving his Engine his own Name, made it obscene to speak of him more. However, he is rank’d among, and receiv’d by the modern Wits, as a great Promoter of Gallantry and Pleasure.
But some evidently believed in such an inventor. Daniel Turner, in his 1717 treatise on syphilis makes mention of the condum and its eponymous inventor:
As to the Preservative in general, I have this only to add farther, that whether any such Thing be possible or not, I shall not take upon me absolutely to determine. But when a certain Gentleman tells us, That it will become every Man to become modest, when at any time a Method of preventing may be recommended upon due Experience: I can’t forbear Enquiring, whether we may expect the Discovery from a Modest Man, or what Reward even a common moral Man will deem him worthy, (without consulting Casuists) that shal first publish it to the World? and indeed when it is revealed, I leave every honest Man to judge of the Consequence; tho’ I think there is no great Danger of such an invention. The Condum being the best, if not the only Preservative our Libertines have found out at present; and yet, by reason of its blunting the Sensation, I have heard some of them acknowledge, that they had often chose to risque a Clap, rather than engage cum Hastis sic clypeatis [i.e., with the spear thus shielded].
So did a man named Condom or Condon invent the device, or at least introduce it to England from the Continent? Many have searched, but no plausible candidate exists. Searches of lists of physicians and surgeons and of army colonels have turned up nothing. More likely, the idea of an eponymous inventor was created in order to explain a word that had no clear origin. Almonds for Parrots and the piece in The Tatler were most likely written tongue in cheek, and by 1717 more serious people like Turner had absorbed the idea as truth.
Three other explanations, none of them having any evidence to back them up, seem to circulate. All three were first proposed in the early twentieth century. The first is that it named after Condom, a town in France. The town’s only claim to fame is that of seventeenth-century theologian Jacques Bénigne Boussuet, the Bishop of Condom. The town has no particular association with sex or birth control, other than the stereotype that things related to sex come from France. The second is that the word is from the Latin condus, a storage container. The third is that it is from the Persian kondü or kendü, an earthenware vessel. All three seem to be rather desperate reaches for an explanation.
The Wikipedia article on the condom claims a 1666 date for the word’s appearance in English, attributing it the “English Birth Rate Commission.” The footnote is to a 2007 popular-press book that gives no source information. I have found no record of condom or any reasonable variation thereof from the seventeenth century, and the “English Birth Rate Commission” does not sound like the name of a body from that era. There was a “National Birth Rate Commission” in existence c.1920, and perhaps that is what is being referred to. But if that commission made such a claim, it was undoubtedly in error. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that condoms were available in London in 1666, but there is no evidence the name is that old.
In the end, we’re left with the answer of etymology unknown. While that may not satisfy, the journey to get to the non-solution has been rather fun.
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