Africa

A twelfth-century T and O map from a manuscript of Isidore's Etymologiae identifying the three continents

31 January 2024

The name of Africa, the second largest continent in both size and population, comes from the Latin Africanus. The Latin name, in turn, probably comes from Ifran, the name of a people in what is now Tunisia and eastern Algeria, ancestors of the modern Amazigh (Berber) people. Various origins for the tribal name have been suggested including afar, a Tamazight (Berber) word for dust (“dusty land”), and ifri, a Tamazight word for cave (“land of cave dwellers”). But the definitive origin has probably been lost to the ages.

Its use as a place name in English dates to the Old English period. It appears in the opening of the Old English translation of Orosius’s Historiarum adversum paganos (History Against the Pagans). Orosius wrote it in the early fifth century CE, and the Old English translation dates to the turn of the ninth century. The text is less of a translation and more of an adaptation and expansion of Orosius’s Latin text:

Ure yldran ealne ðysne ymbhwyrft ðyses middangeardes, cwæþ Orosius, swa swa Oceanus ymbligeþ utan, þone man garsægc hatað, on þreo todældon and hy þa þry dælas on þreo tonemdon: Asiam and Europem and Affricam, þeah ðe sume men sædon þæt þær næran buton twegan dælas, Asia and þæt oþer Europe. Asia is befangen mid Oceanus þæm garsecge suþan and norþan and eastan and swa ealne middangeard from eastdæle healfne behæfð. Þonne on ðæm norþdæle, þæt is Asia on þa swiþran healfe in Danai þære ie, ðær Asia and Europe togædre licgað. And þonne of þære ilcan ie Danai suþ andlang Wendelsæs and þonne wiþ westan Alexandria þære byrig Asia and Affica togædere licgeað.

(Orosius said that our ancestors divided the whole circle of this earth into three parts, surrounded by the sea called Ocean, and they named these three parts Asia and Europe and Africa, though some people said that there were only two parts, Asia and the other being Europe. Asia is encompassed by the sea of Ocean south and north and east and contains all the eastern half of the earth. In the northern part, that is Asia on the right side of the river Don, there the boundaries of Asia and Europe run together. And then from the river Don the border runs south along the Mediterranean and then Asia and Africa meet west of the city of Alexandria.)

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Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Africa. Oxfordreference.com.

Godden, Malcolm R., ed. The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2016, 24.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2012, s.v. African, n. and adj.

Image credit: London, British Library, MS Royal 12 F.IV, fol. 135v. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Europe

A twelfth-century T and O map from a manuscript of Isidore's Etymologiae identifying the three continents

29 January 2024

The toponym Europe is widely claimed to come from ancient Greek Εὐρώπη (Europé), the name of a Phoenician princess of Tyre who was abducted by Zeus in the form a bull. The tale dates to the Mycenaean period (1750–1050 BCE). Variations of the tale as to exactly who Europa was and where she came from exist, but the basic element of abduction by the god in the form of a bull is consistent. The myth does not explain how her name became associated with the continent.

Several alternatives to the mythical origin have been proposed. One has it coming from the ancient Greek εὐρωπός (europos) meaning wide or broad. Another has it coming from either the Akkadian erebu (to go down, set) or the Phoenician ereb (evening, west) making the name something like “land of the setting sun.” Both of these are unlikely.

Its use as a place name in English dates to the Old English period. It appears in the opening of the Old English translation of Orosius’s Historiarum adversum paganos (History Against the Pagans). Orosius wrote it in the early fifth century CE, and the Old English translation dates to the turn of the ninth century. It’s less of a translation and more of an adaptation and expansion of Orosius’s Latin text:

Ure yldran ealne ðysne ymbhwyrft ðyses middangeardes, cwæþ Orosius, swa swa Oceanus ymbligeþ utan, þone man garsægc hatað, on þreo todældon and hy þa þry dælas on þreo tonemdon: Asiam and Europem and Affricam, þeah ðe sume men sædon þæt þær næran buton twegan dælas, Asia and þæt oþer Europe. Asia is befangen mid Oceanus þæm garsecge suþan and norþan and eastan and swa ealne middangeard from eastdæle healfne behæfð. Þonne on ðæm norþdæle, þæt is Asia on þa swiþran healfe in Danai þære ie, ðær Asia and Europe togædre licgað. And þonne of þære ilcan ie Danai suþ andlang Wendelsæs and þonne wiþ westan Alexandria þære byrig Asia and Affica togædere licgeað.

(Orosius said that our ancestors divided the whole circle of this earth into three parts, surrounded by the sea called Ocean, and they named these three parts Asia and Europe and Africa, though some people said that there were only two parts, Asia and the other being Europe. Asia is encompassed by the sea of Ocean south and north and east and contains all the eastern half of the earth. In the northern part, that is Asia on the right side of the river Don, there the boundaries of Asia and Europe run together. And then from the river Don the border runs south along the Mediterranean and then Asia and Africa meet west of the city of Alexandria.)

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Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Godden, Malcolm R., ed. The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2016, 24.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. Europe, n., Europa, n., European, adj. and n.

Image credit: London, British Library, MS Royal 12 F.IV, fol. 135v. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

magnesium

Magnesium burning

26 January 2024

Magnesium is a chemical element with atomic number 12 and the symbol Mg. It is a shiny, gray metal with low density, low melting point, and high reactivity. It has a wide variety of uses and is commonly used in aluminum alloys for aircraft, automobiles, and other applications demanding a strong but light metal. Magnesium easily ignites and burns with a bright, white light, making it useful for various illumination and pyrotechnic applications.

The element was not isolated until the early nineteenth century, but the name dates to antiquity. It comes from the ancient Greek Μαγνῆτις λίθος (Magnetis lithos) or Magnesian stone, referring to a lodestone or magnet. The mineral is named after one of three places that were named Magnesia in the ancient world where the ore was found, one in Thessaly and two in Asia Minor. In Hellenistic/Byzantine Greek starting in the second century CE, μαγνησία (magnesia) referred to several different ores. The word was borrowed into post-classical Latin and from there into English by the fourteenth century.

Medieval alchemists considered various types of magnesia to be constituents of the philosopher’s stone, and Geoffrey Chaucer records this idea in the Canon Yeoman’s Tale from c.1387:

Also ther was a disciple of Plato,
That on a tyme seyde his maister to,
As his book Senior wol bere witnesse,
And this was his demande in soothfastnesse:
"Telle me the name of the privee stoon."
And Plato answerde unto hym anoon,
"Take the stoon that men name Titanos."
"Which is that?" quod he. "Magnasia is the same,"
Seyde Plato. "Ye, sire, and is it thus?
This is ignotum per ignocius.
What is Magnasia, good sire, I yow preye?"
"It is a water that is maad, I seye,
Of elementes foure," quod Plato.
"Telle me the roote, good sire," quod he tho,
"Of that water, if it be youre wil."
"Nay, nay," quod Plato, "certein, that I nyl.
The philosophres sworn were everychoon
That they sholden discovere it unto noon,
Ne in no book it write in no manere.

(Also, there was a disciple of Plato,
That one time said to his master,
As his book Senior will bear witness,
And this was his question in truth:
“Tell me the name of the secret stone.”
And Plato answered him at once,
“Take the stone that men name Titanos.”
Which is that?” said he. “Magnesia is the same,”
Said Plato. “Yes, sir, and is it thus?
This is explaining the unknown with more unknowns.
What is Magnesia, good sir, I pray you?”
“It is a liquid that is made, I say,
Of the four elements,” said Plato.
“Telle me the basic constituent, good sir,” he then said,
“Of that liquid, if it be your will.”
“Nay, nay,” said Plato, “certainly I won’t.
The philosophers were sworn every single one
That they should reveal it to no one,
Nor in any book write it in any manner.”)

But by the seventeenth century magnesia had become a name for the element we now call manganese. In his 1677 Natural History of Oxford-shire, Robert Plot records this usage:

There is also near Thame on Cuttlebrook-side, another Iron-colour'd stone, but more spungy than the former, and including within it a blackish kind of Cinder; the most like, of any thing I yet have seen, to Magnesia (in the Glass-houses, called Manganese) only it wants of its closeness of texture and weight.

And by the late eighteenth century the form magnesium is being used to refer to manganese. From a 23 April 1781 letter by chemist Joseph Black to James Watt:

I have lately made some on Manganeze [sic] and find the purest I can get contains some lead and I suspect that the Metal you got from it was mostly Lead—The Swedish Chemists also have got a Metal from it \they call it Magnesium/ which they say is hard and brittle and more difficult to melt than Iron.

But this nomenclature created problems, with manganese being confused with other magnesia minerals. In his 1784 Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, William Coxe records this confusion:

manganesium* salitum, or manganese united to the muriatick acid

The note reads:

* In the original it is magnesium; but Mr. Withering informs us, that it is now changed by the concurrence of professor Bergman, to manganesium, in order to prevent confusion from its similarity to magnesia.

Finally, in 1808 chemist Humphry Davy isolated what we now know as the element magnesium, but he originally dubbed it magnium:

These new substances will demand names; and on the same principles as I have named the bases of the fixed alkalies, potassium and sodium, I shall venture to denominate the metals from the alkaline earths barium, strontium, calcium, and magnium; the last of these words is undoubtedly objectionable, but magnesium has been already applied to metallic manganese, and would consequently have been an equivocal term.

But Davy recanted this decision, and by the 1812 publication of his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, he had changed the name to magnesium:

In my first paper on the decomposition of the earths, published in 1808, I called the metal from magnesia, magnium, fearing lest, if called magnesium, it should be confounded with the name formerly applied to manganese. The candid criticisms of some philosophical friends have induced me to apply the termination in the usual manner.

Now, over two hundred years later, the confusion over exactly what magnesium is has ended, and students of chemistry, unlike their predecessor, the Canon’s Yeoman, are no longer learning ignotum per ignocius.

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Sources:

Black, Joseph. Letter to James Watt, 23 April 1781. Partners in Science: Letters of James Watt and Joseph Black. Eric Robinson and Douglas McKie, eds. London: Constable, 1970, 111.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canon Yeoman’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, 8.1448–66. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.

Coxe, William. Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, vol. 3 of 3. Dublin: S. Price, et al., 1784, 262. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Davy, Humphry. “Electro-Chemical Researches, on the Decomposition of the Earths; with Observations on the Metals Obtained from the Alkaline Earths, and on the Amalgam Procured from Ammonia.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 98, 30 June 1808, 333–70 at 346.

———. Elements of Chemical Philosophy. Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1812, 198. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—from Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 1 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09448-5.  

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2000, s.v. magnesium, n., magnesia, n., magnium, n., magnes, n.

Plot, Robert. The Natural History of Oxford-shire. Oxford: Theater, 1677, 79. Early English Books Online.

Photo credit: Hiroaki Nakamura, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnesium_Sparks.jpg Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Asia

A twelfth-century T and O map from a manuscript of Isidore's Etymologiae identifying the three continents

24 January 2024

The origin of Asia, the name of the largest continent, is uncertain. It could from the Hittite name for a land in what is now eastern Anatolia (i.e., Turkey); there is a c.1235 BCE reference to a Hittite victory over the land of Assuva or Asuwa. And Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, uses Ἀσία (Asia) to refer to Anatolia.

English use of Asia dates to Old English, where the name was acquired via Latin. One of its appearances is in the opening of the Old English translation of Orosius’s Historiarum adversum paganos (History Against the Pagans). Orosius wrote the history in the early fifth century CE, and the Old English translation dates to the turn of the ninth century. It’s less of a translation and more of an adaptation and expansion of Orosius’s Latin text:

Ure yldran ealne ðysne ymbhwyrft ðyses middangeardes, cwæþ Orosius, swa swa Oceanus ymbligeþ utan, þone man garsægc hatað, on þreo todældon and hy þa þry dælas on þreo tonemdon: Asiam and Europem and Affricam, þeah ðe sume men sædon þæt þær næran buton twegan dælas, Asia and þæt oþer Europe. Asia is befangen mid Oceanus þæm garsecge suþan and norþan and eastan and swa ealne middangeard from eastdæle healfne behæfð. Þonne on ðæm norþdæle, þæt is Asia on þa swiþran healfe in Danai þære ie, ðær Asia and Europe togædre licgað. And þonne of þære ilcan ie Danai suþ andlang Wendelsæs and þonne wiþ westan Alexandria þære byrig Asia and Affica togædere licgeað.

(Orosius said that our ancestors divided the whole circle of this earth into three parts, surrounded by the sea called Ocean, and they named these three parts Asia and Europe and Africa, though some people said that there were only two parts, Asia and the other being Europe. Asia is encompassed by the sea of Ocean south and north and east and contains all the eastern half of the earth. In the northern part, that is Asia on the right side of the river Don, there the boundaries of Asia and Europe run togehter. And then from the river Don the border runs south along the Mediterranean and then Asia and Africa meet west of the city of Alexandria.)

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Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Asia. Oxfordreference.com.

Godden, Malcolm R., ed. The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2016, 24.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2021, s.v. Asian, n. and adj.

Image credit: London, British Library, MS Royal 12 F.IV, fol. 135v. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

hootchy-kootchy

Ashea Wabe, a.k.a. Little Egypt, posing as if dancing the Hootchy-Kootchy

22 January 2023

Hootchy-kootchy, the name of an exotic and sexually suggestive dance of alleged “Oriental” origin, somewhat short of a striptease and often performed as a carnival or side-show attraction, is of unknown origin. In French it is known as danse du ventre (belly dance). The name is preceded by and is probably a variant of earlier, reduplicative forms, such as kouta-kouta and coochie-coochie. All these words can be spelled in a variety of ways. Hootchy-kootchy is unrelated to either hooch meaning liquor or hooch meaning hut or dwelling.

I have found an early use of Hoochy-Coochy as the name of a minstrel entertainer in 1890. What relation this has with the later uses is not known. From Biff Hall’s 1890 The Turnover Club:

I have been told that one night “Hoochy-Coochy” Rice, the minstrel man—they always call Billy “Hoochy-Coochy,” because he invariably says that whenever he comes on stage—entered Hoyt’s room with a dark lantern and a jimmy and stole a new song which the author had just written.

But the dance first appears a couple of years later under the name Koota-Koota, evidently first performed by a dancer named Avita. From New York’s The Evening World of 13 May 1892:

A novelty in dancing, it is announced, will be seen in “Elysium” at Herrmann’s Theatre next week. It is called the “Koota-Koota,” whatever that may mean, and is danced by Avita, an English character actress, who is said to have performed it before the Rajah during her visit to the East Indies. Isn’t that real nice?

And a few days later this advertisement for the show appeared in the New York Herald of 19 May 1892:

HERRMANN’S BROADWAY AND 29TH ST.
STANDING ROOM ONLY
Harem scene at 9:10

Shapely girls,
Handsome faces,
lovely costumes,
airy graces

FLERON’S LYRIC COMEDY,
ELYSIUM.

Superb scenery,
artful glances,
Laughter galore,
enchanting dances.

KOOTA-KOOTA DANCE At 9:30
Seats four weeks in advance.

Avita’s Koota-Koota quickly became a sensation, imitated by any number of other dancers. And numerous dancers performed it at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The dancer known as Little Egypt is often credited with originating the dance at the 1893 exposition, but as we have seen the dance clearly predates the fair. Little Egypt was the stage name of a number of exotic dancers at the turn of the twentieth century. At least one of these, Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos, did perform at the exposition, but there is no evidence that she performed a dance called the hootchy-cootchy there.

We see Coochee-Coochee dance in an article about the “vice and vulgarity” at New Jersey’s Somerset County Fair in the New-York Daily Tribune of 14 September 1894:

“Come, gents, walk right up and see the ‘Couchee-Couchee Dance.’ For gents only, remember: no ladies allowed.”

The harsh tones of the frowsy “gent” who made this announcement were wafted on the clear, pure, cool air at the Somerset County Fair grounds yesterday afternoon, through the windows of the pavilion a few feet away, in which were exhibited the specimens of needle and fancy work from the clever hands of Somerset maidens and matrons.

And a few months later a Kutcha-Kutcha dance was shut down in Washington, DC. From the Washington Post of 5 December 1894:

Kutcha-Kutcha Dance Forbidden.

The Kutcha-Kutcha dance, which was put on with the Reily and Wood show at Kernan’s Theater, Monday night, was stopped yesterday by Mr. Kernan, who was much displeased with it. Yesterday morning Lieut. Amiss when to the theater and said the dance would have to stop, and was told that the dancer had already been ordered to modify and tone down her performance.

We finally see hoochy-coochy as the name of the dance in the St. Louis Republic of 18 June 1896:

The faithful pedestrians of the Merchants’ League Club were next in line, following a line of carriages made conspicuous by a red light shining on the face of one of the occupants, to-wit: Henry Ziegenhein. About the center of the Merchants’ League columns came a band playing the “hoochy-coochy” dance.

So hootchy-kootchy is reduplicative nonsense word that is simply one in a line of similar terms for exotic and sexually suggestive dances.

For a more complete history of the term and of the dance itself, see Peter Jensen Brown’s blog post on the subject. Part 1 and Part 2.

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Sources:

“Among the Player Folk.” The Evening World (New York City), 13 May 1892, 5/1. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.

Brown, Peter Jensen. “The ‘Kouta-Kouta’ and the ‘Coochie-Coochie—A History and Etymology of the ‘Hoochie Coochie’ Dance.” Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog, 4 July 2016. Part 1 and Part 2.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. hootchy-kootchy, n.

Hall, “Biff.” The Turnover Club. Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1890, 75. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Herrmann’s Broadway and 29th St.” (advertisement). New York Herald, 19 May 1892, 4/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Kutcha-Kutcha Dance Forbidden.” Washington Post, 5 December 1894, 6/6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“M’Kinley Parade Short, Wet and Dull.” St. Louis Republic (Missouri), 18 June 1896, 9/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2020, s.v. hootchy-kootchy, n. and adj.; December 2007, s.v. coochie-coochie, n.

“Vice and Vulgarity at a Fair.” New-York Daily Tribune, 14 September 1894, 5/4. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.

Photo credit: Benjamin Falk, c. 1895. Wikipedia Commons. Public domain photo.