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From: John Plant <>
Subject: Re: Geoffrey Plantagenet's name (... Plantevelu ...)
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:41:56 +0000


Nat,

First of all, thank you for the primary source evidence of contemporary
usage of the name Plantapilosa.

You also raise some valid questions which I shall attempt to answer
briefly. Fuller details relating to my answers are given in the paper
John S Plant (2005) "Modern Methods and a Controversial Surname: Plant"
Nomina 28, pps 115-133. A web site relating to the Nomina journal is:
http://www.snsbi.org.uk/index.html


> 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'.

While I have every respect for pragmatic politeness, the 'shoot' meaning
of planta is generally more salient than the 'sole of foot' meaning.
Both meanings can be related loosely to primitive beliefs about mythic
origins from the land. A sense 'hairy paws' is a possible interpretation
and it is not surprising that this attracts more polite discussion than
'hairy shoot'. However, this does not detract from the salience of the
'shoot for propagation' meaning. The "Creation is Birth" metaphor is
accepted as a timeless standard metaphor [Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors
We Live By (1980), pp. 74-75.] as so also is the "People are Plants"
metaphor [Lakoff and Turner, Beyond Cool Reason (1989), pp. 6 and
12-14.]. By standard cognitive metaphor theory, Plantapilosa is an image
metaphor for a gallant man.

> > 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?

In 13th century England, there is more evidence for the name Plantefolie
than either Plantebene (rare) or Planterose (mainly French). Presumably,
it was for reasons of politeness that Reaney (1st edition, 1958) omitted
Plantefolie but this omission significantly distorts the deliberations.
Also, a study of the Middle English Dictionary (and other dictionaries)
shows that it is not at all clear that the "bean" meaning of bene was
salient.

> 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?

The main thrust of my Nomina paper is to discredit the occupational
explanation for Plant and related names. There are several strands to my
arguments. I shall give just a taste of them here.

It should be realised that Reaney was going against previous opinion
when he proposed that Plant was a metonym for a gardener. Indeed the
prolific surname Plant has been ascribed a different meaning each time
an authority has written about it. M.A.Lower (1860) said that it was a
corruption of Plantagenet. Ernest Weekly (1916) suggested 'from the
plantation' or 'sprig' or 'cudgel' or 'young offspring'. Reaney (1958)
proposed the occupational meaning 'gardener'. Hanks and Hodges (1988)
added the opinion 'a tender or delicate individual'. The only meaning of
plant, albeit archaic, in the Oxford English Dictionary that fits
directly as a surname is the noun(1) sense 1(c) which is a 'young
person' (cf. the metaphorical mapping of 'offshoot' to 'offspring' and
the Welsh meaning 'children' of plant).

It seems likely that Reaney dismissed the most obvious meaning
'offspring' because the Plant name is widespread from the earliest
times. However, my recent Y-DNA evidence shows that Plant is a
"single-ancestor" prolific surname despite that. Presumably Reaney was
convinced that an occuptional meaning had to be invented to explain such
a widespread name - this despite the existance of many names of
relationship such as Child, Children, Sone, Dauter, Vaughan. However,
the DNA evidence shows that (false paternity events aside) the Plants
are indeed the offspring of a single ancestor.

This meaning for Plant relates to the 'shoot' or 'offshoot'
manifestation of the more general "People are Plants" metataphor. The
'shoot' sense relates to a qualia role of function while the 'offshoot'
sense relates to a qualia role of origins. For the active Plantagenets
the noble "function" sense of 'scion' or 'establisher shoot' seems most
appropriate whilst for lesser mortals, such as Plants, a passive
"origins" sense of 'offshoot' or 'offspring' seems most appropriate.

Regards,

John

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