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From: John Plant <>
Subject: Re: Geoffrey Plantagenet's name (... Plantevelu ...)
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:32:59 +0000
References: <43F46504.9030500@isc.keele.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: <43F46504.9030500@isc.keele.ac.uk>


Nat,

To be more precise, I argue in my Nomina paper that the 'offspring'
meaning of Plant should not be ignored. Reaney criticised C. L'Estrange
Ewen with `Worst of all, he rejects sound etymologies which do not fit
his preconceived theories'. Yet, he himself ignores Weekly's sound
etymology `young offspring'.

You comment, in regard to the `hairy shoot' versus 'hairy sole of foot'
literal meanings Plantapilosa:

> I am not sure I understand your reliance on 'metaphor' as weighting
> your choice of meaning for this name, nor do I understand your use of
> 'politeness' here in attempting to rationalize (and counter) others'
> opinions that 'hairy foot' is perhaps the more likely meaning.

I am not using `metaphor' here to mean a dubious non-linear meaning. In
cognitive metaphor theory, almost everthing we say is interpreted in
terms of metaphoric and metonymic systems. Norse kernings are especially
rich in condensed metaphor and metonymy, such as saying the 'whale
house' to mean the sea. In pragmatics, which is a branch of formal
semantics, people do not say what they really mean for such reasons as
modesty or politeness. The Politeness Maxim of pragmatics is sometimes
called the Polyanna Principle. Thus, 'hairy shoot' is a particularly
rude image metaphor for the generative powers of a man and, by a kind of
metonymy called synechdoch, this can stand for the man as a whole.
Discussing 'hairy paw' avoids the problems of sounding rude; but it
seems a safe bet that Plantapilosa did not literally have a `hairy paw'
but that he did have a `hairy shoot'. By drawing attention to his `hairy
shoot' the name Plantapilosa draws attention to his virility and
gallantry, producing a fitting epithet for a War Lord. Despite the
problems of spelling out this argument in a polite manner, this seems to
me to be far more direct than saying that 'hairy paw' implied
specifically a fox (why not a wolf or a bear or a badger or a rabbit or
a hare?). I should also need to be convinced that medieval bestials
ascribed the same moral characteristics to a fox that are suggested when
we say 'foxiness' today.

> Again the politeness. What do you mean? And, can you point to evidence
> of frequency of 'plantefolie'? Finally, can you show why we should not
> interpret 'plantefolie' as a botanical - occupational name either?

In his 18th century English Dictionary, Samuel Johnson came out with it
and said that "to plant" means "to procreate". This can be related to
the planting of seed and there are Biblical references to man's seed
meaning children. In Welsh, the literal meaning of the verb planta is
"to beget children" and the noun plant literally means "children". In
Middle English and Old French, folie means wickedness or lewdness and
the adjective foli means wicked or salacious. There is one occurrence of
the by-name Plantebene (according the the MED, bene can mean the seed of
the Egyptian bean plant but there are many other more frequent known
meanings). On the other hand, there are four different occurrences of
the name Plantefolie: Curia Regis 1209; Curia Regis 1226; Close Rolls
1263; Close Rolls 1270 (for further details see
http://www.plant-fhg.org.uk/origins.html#13c ). I suppose some people do
it as an occupation but there is little room for doubt that Plantefolie
is a name of philandering. By the way, names relating to agricultural
planting are rare and this is held to be because the occupation was too
commonplace for it to serve as an occupational surname. Occupational is
one category or surname, but surnames of relationship are more common.

> I do not understand your use of 'salient' either. I think you are
> trying to say something like "it is not at all clear that 'bene' meant
> 'bean' here." I suppose that's true, but you need to show how looking
> at a dictionary has weakened this apparently obvious element. The OED,
> certainly, shows abundant Middle English instances of the spelling
> 'bene' for the modern 'bean': indeed it appears to have been the modal
> spelling (disregarding the declined plural 'benen', etc.). The burden
> of proof is on showing why this name ought to mean something other
> than 'planter of beans or seeds'.

Many people take the closest modern word or phrase they can think of and
presume that this is what the Middle English meant. This is a dangerous
approach however. The entry for 'bene' in the MED is very long and it
has practically nothing to do with beans. By the way, Reaney's
definition of the surname Bean, as I remember it, has little or nothing
to do with beans.

> It is obvious that that is your main thrust. I am wary, though, of
> circular reasoning or poor use of onomastic sources, which one often
> sees in arguments which counter the conventional wisdom on a
> particular surname. I want to make sure I don't see these failings in
> this particular case.

Hopefully, I have gone some way towards answering these proper concerns
that you have.

> These various offerings don't detract from Reaney's guess, which still
> seems sensible given the forms planterose, plantebene, and plantefolie
> present in the 13th c. I would reject Lower out of hand here, but
> realize that the others' propositions are worth considering.

Reaney's Surname Dictioanry is widely available and a lot of people give
substantial credance to his guesses. However, they are now
half-a-century out of date and the Oxford University Press have decided
to discontinue it because of the large number of complaints thay are
receiving about it.

> I'm not sure what you mean about "the only meaning of plant ... that
> fits directly as a surname." The principle of metonymy means that the
> name needn't originate as a noun at all, but rather comes into use by
> the association of one word with another--in this case, the verb 'to
> plant', often taking a specific direct object (plantrose, plantbene),
> being used for the person who does the action.

There is direct early evidence in the OED for the "young person" meaning
of Plant. From my early English literature searches there is further
evidence to support it. Why resort to metonymy, as invented by Reaney,
when there is a perfectly good "literal" (as most people would call it)
meaning of Plant. Why pick out Plantebene and Planterose (just because
these are the easiest to understand/misunderstand though modern English
interpretation/misinterpretation) when there are many other Plant-like
names including a 13th century non-royal use of the name Plauntegenet.
The provenance of Plantebene in contemporary evidence is very doubtful
and Plantefolie (leaving aside modern misconceptions about foliage) just
doesn't play out at all.

> By what logic is it 'the most obvious meaning'?

By the logic of contemporary meaning rather than modern
misunderstandings based a couple of carefully selected similar names.

> The is an important assertion of fact. What is the evidence for
> Plant's early and wide proliferation (compared to other surnames
> deriving from Middle English speech, 12th-13th centuries)? And why
> could not Reaney have chosen 'offspring' or 'shoot' in that sense,
for > its meaning, if he thought it a widespread name?

The name distribution evidence is another long and complicated story and
I am running out of time. Suffice it to say that the eminent local and
family historian David Hey (The Oxford Guide to Family History, etc.)
quite recently published that Plant is a "multi-origin" name but now
accepts that he was wrong. The distribution data provides a proximity to
Wales and the literal "children" meaning of plant. The name distribution
data is presented in my Nomina paper and there is also a more-populist
presentation at http://www.plant-fhg.org.uk/distrib.html . I can not
answer for Reaney - I was just trying to think of a possible reason or
excuse for him. Another possible factor is that he may have been
preoccupied with disproving the earlier "Plantagenet" claim and
immediately turned to selecting some other similar names. However,
simply relying on Planterose seems quite as irrational as pointing just
to Plantagenet. It is fair to say that the "Plantagenet story" will not
go away and there is a proper place for debunking it. There are some
proximities of the formative Plant surname to illegitimate descendants
of Geffrey Plante Genest but any fanciful claim of genetic male-line
descent now relates to the prospects for further Y-DNA evidence. The
onus of proof insists that there is *no* genetic connection though there
is a possibility of some cultural interaction with the Plante Genest
metaphor.


> What you report of the Y-DNA evidence is also extremely interesting.
> But even if all current Plants can be shown to derive from a single
> ancestor, that does not necessarily alter our choice for the meaning
> of the name. Occupational surnames may generate many contemporaneous
> distinct agnate surname origins, but the do not HAVE to; similarly, a
> name which appears to have many distinct genetic origin points may be
> likely to be an occupational name which was in widespread use, but not
> necessarily. Specifically, might 'Plant' have arisen as a rare
> occupational name, which then only survived as a name for descendants
> of a single person?

The DNA evidence is reported in my Nomina paper and for a more populist
account see http://www.plant-fhg.org.uk/dna.html . I suppose it is just
about possible to cling on to the gardener argument though it is now
more necessary to jump through hoops to sustain it. Why not start afresh
with the latest evidence and say that the literal meaning of plant is
'offspring' (Plant is possibly from Somerset near Wales where there is
explicit evidence that the surname was hereditary by 1328) and the
Plants had seemingly migrated (e.g. 3 merchants in Rouen in 1273) around
the south coast of England before their main homeland became east
Cheshire by around 1400. The single-family surname then spread widely
throughout the west midlands and beyond.

> I think these ideas are intriguing, but I admit I still see no good
> systematic argument for preferring any other etymology over Reaney's.
> The DNA evidence about current holders of the name, combined with
> compiled evidence of the distribution and use of the 'Plant' surname
> and compounds in medieval sources, would be a welcome body of
evidence > to examine. But I think it does not in itself force us to
prefer, by
> way of etymological explanation, a metaphorical name-origin over the
> more concrete one suggested by Reaney.

Again, I contend that the literal meaning "children" of plant is more
concrete than a vague metonymy and carefully selected evidence to invent
a "gardener" theory for Plant.

Phew! Time for lunch.

John

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