Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 1 March, 1899 No. 3 
ETYMOLOGY OF ANEMONE. 
E. H: Tor: 
THE usual derivation of the name “Anemone” from the Greek 
vepos, ** wind," is regarded by many persons as unsatisfactory. I am 
told by botanists that there is no such relation between the flower and 
the wind as to make the name “ wind-flower ” a natural one ; and it is 
doubtful whether in early times a plant would be named from its rela- 
tion to atmospheric conditions — its designation would rather be sought 
in some more obvious characteristic, as color, odor, or shape. The 
name is old — it is employed by Dioscorides and Pliny as a well-known 
name, and it occurs in Theocritus, Theophrastus and earlier writers. 
The ancient writers differ, however, in the explanation of the term; 
according to some the plant is so called because it easily loses its 
flowers in the wind, according to others because it flourishes or does 
not flourish in the wind. Hesychios and some modern scholars con- 
nect the word with a Greek adjective (derived from dvenos) meaning 
“vain, fruitless.” In this uncertainty of the Greek explanation it may 
be lawful to look elsewhere for the origin of the word. We know that 
at a very early period Semitic names found their way into the Greek 
language. ‘The Phoenicians had settlements on the coast of Greece 
in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B. C., and left many traces of 
their residence in names of places and of deities (for example, Cadmus, 
Cadmeia, Melicertes, Salamis). Certain Greek names of plants also 
(as, cypress, hyssop, balsam, myrrh, lotus, and others) are derived from 
the Semitic. The Arabic name for the red anemone is shagaig an- 
nu‘man, “the wounds of Nu‘man,” which the Arabian lexicographers 
connect with a king of that name. But this explanation is a bit of | 
folk-etymology. Vu‘man is identical with the old-Phcenician (or old- 
Syrian) Vatmán, a deity who was the same with Adonis or Tammuz. 
The name has been preserved in the Old Testament in a passage 
