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From: Nathaniel Taylor <>
Subject: Re: Geoffrey Plantagenet's name (... Plantevelu ...)
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:17:21 GMT
References: <43F2F906.5070208@isc.keele.ac.uk>


In article <>,
(John Plant) wrote:

> ... However, here is some
> information I have written about "Geffrey Plante Genest" who is
> generally believed to have fathered the Plantagenet surname of some 300
> years later. I should be interested in any additional relevant
> information. In particular, I should be interested in primary source
> evidence for the contemporary use of the the name Plantevelu (Planta
> Pilus) by the ninth-century founder of a new duchy of Aquitaine, Bernard
> Plantevelu.

<...>

> The Latin meaning of planta was a `shoot for propagation' and this had
> led on to the `hairy shoot' meaning of the ninth-century name Plantevelu
> in Aquitaine. Connotations of generation should be placed in the context
> of late medieval metaphysics rather than modern biology.

I see you have sensibly asked for primary sources using the nickname
'Plantapilosa' for count Bernard. The first use I turned up is a
contemporary use, by Hincmar of Rheims in the _Annals of Saint-Bertin_,
sub anno 880. The original runs:

... In quo itinere ejectis de castro Matiscano Bosonis hominibus, ipsum
castellum ceperunt [that is, the two kings Louis III and his brother
Caroloman, king of Aquitaine], et ceum comitatum Bernardo cognomento
Planta-pilosa dederunt... [1871 ed., p. 285: the 1871 edition is
available on Gallica; the better 1964 edition is not.]

Janet Nelson refers, in her footnotes to her English translation (p.
221), to an article by L. Malbos, "Du surnom de Plantevelue," _Le Moyen
Age_ 70 (1964), 5-11. Perhaps following Malbos, Nelson glosses
Hincmar's nickname for Bernard as 'hairy paws', and suggests a negative
connotation of 'foxiness' (which is certainly consistent with how
Hincmar was portraying this Bernard).

Without going to that article, I would ask, what reason do you have for
crediting only one of the two general meanings of the word 'planta', in
this nickname? Since the Latin word 'planta' was since classical times
EITHER 'a shoot or plant', OR 'the sole of a foot' (see Lewis & Short,
Neirmeyer, etc.), it is by no means certain that the name Plantapilosa
was intended to mean 'hairy shoot' rather than 'hairy foot'. The latter
'meaning' seems to me (at least) rather more likely than the former,
though neither sense would necessarily have been meant to be taken
literally. In Septimania at least, there was something of a vogue in
endowing counts with names denoting anatomical oddities--at least by the
time of the twelfth-century chroniclers, writing retrospectively about
men who had been dead for several generations (e.g. Guifred the Hairy,
William Long-Nose, William Short-Nose, etc.). Such names may themselves
have been understood as metaphorical or idiomatic for some other
memorable feature that we cannot now determine.

> Names of philandering were popular though, with the
> mid-thirteenth-century Savoyard connection, there may have been some
> interchange of influence between English and Swiss Plant-like names.
>
> English:
>
> Plantebene - pleasant shoot
>
> Plantefolie - wickedness shoot
>
> Planterose - risen shoot
>
>...

Reaney & Wilson (Dictionary of English Surnames, 3d rev. ed.) gloss
'plantebene' as a Middle English name given to a cultivator of beans,
and 'planterose' for a cultivator of roses; more generally, 'plant' or
'plante-' names are said by them to derive from the obvious occupational
origin rather than any sort of metaphorically charged epithet. Must we
take the zebra over the horse in these cases?

>...
>
> Those who knew scholastic teachings may have been aware of religious
> aspects to Plant-like names.
>
>...
>
> As scholastic ideas became better known, a more developed metaphysical
> explanation for the Plantagenet name may have come more to the fore.
>
>...
>
> By the mid-fifteenth century, Plantagenet had become a royal surname,
> relating to the renewal of the immediate male line, following the
> madness of the Lancastrian king, Henry VI who was replaced by a king
> from the rival House of York. The Plantagenet name embodied a sense of
> this creative renewal as well as indicating that the House of York
> descended, like that of Lancaster, from Geffrey Plante Genest, their
> common forefather of some three hundred years earlier.

This is interesting, and such musings and associations may have been
relevant in the case of the Yorkists' adoption of 'Plantagenet', or at
least among educated commentators on the troubles of the 15th century.

But shouldn't you consider the simpler, occupational explanation for
names of the form 'plant' or 'plante-___' used by lesser individuals in
later medieval England?

Nat Taylor

a genealogist's sketchbook:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/

my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/immigrantsa.htm

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