Onion Words in English & French             

 

 

Chives, Ramp, Shallot, Leek, Ail, Garlic, Scallion. Today: all about the origins of common English and French onion words, prompted by the fact that it’s time to harvest wild garlic in southern Quebec. Every year about this time, in moist woodlands, some Quebeckers illegally gather this endangered member of the onion family. Its taste is much milder and more sensual than common garlic and l’ail des bois fetches a good price at Montréal restaurants and so it is widely poached.

© Stephen L. Solheim, University of Wisconsin at Madison, photo used with permission

This little onion of the woods is also called l’ail sauvage and l’ail trilobé and has the botanical name, Allium tricoccum. One of the American names for this wee wild onion is ramp, explained below.

Tricoccum = tri Latin ‘three’ + coccus Latin ‘seed, berry’ from Greek kokkos berry, anything shaped like a small berry. Tricoccum means “having three seeds” and usually implies “breaking into three, one-seeded parts.”

Think of all the generic names of bacteria that use this Greek root kokkos: staphylococcus ‘shaped like a bunch of grape (berries)’ or streptococcus ‘shaped like a twisted chain of berries’ from Greek streptos ‘twisted.’

A colored transmission electron micrograph of Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the so-called 'flesh-eating' bacteria

 

Origin of Name: Ramp

Quoted From the internet: “Wild garlic grows wild in eastern North America, ranging from the rich, moist woodlands of Nova Scotia and southern Quebec, south through New England and the central Appalachian states, down into the cool upland portions of Georgia, and as far west as Iowa and Minnesota.

What’s in a name
The name “ramp” comes from the British Isles, where a related plant, Allium ursinum, grows wild. The British folk name was ramsen, the plural form of an Old English word for wild garlic, hramsa. The similarity between Allium ursinum and Allium tricoccum in taste, appearance, and growth habit led early English settlers of Appalachia to call the latter by the English folk name, which later was shortened to ramp.”

 

ALLIUM

Genus: Allium < allium Latin, garlic < all Celtic adjective ‘hot, pungent, spicy.’ From the Latin comes the French word for garlic, ail and the Italian for garlic, aglio. This large genus contains more than 300 species.

Plant Family: Alliaceae, the capacious onion family, including chives, garlic, leek, shallots, and the ornamental onions like moly and giant allium.

Species

For Canadian gardeners, the flowering onions fill a niche, blooming after most tulips and early spring bulbs have flowered, but before the midsummer show of lilies. One of our native wildlings that well stands transplanting to the garden is Allium canadense or Canada Onion. Its small flowerhead blooms in white, pink, or lilac shades. Showier but shorter is Allium moly (Greek, name of a yellow-flowered plant) which gives loose umbels of vibrant yellow in June. This has been a popular flowering onion since Elizabethan times. Shakespeare’s contemporaries called these onions “mollies.”

The Colossus of ornamental onions is Allium giganteum (Botanical Latin, unusually tall or large < Gigantes Greek, mythological giants so powerful they once laid siege to heaven. Zeus had to dispatch them with lightning bolts, and Hercules tidied up the surviving stray giants by clubbing them to death. These giant onions reach two metres in my garden and bloom in spectacular, dense umbels of purply-blue. They are giants for the back of the border and need plenty of space. Fertilized liberally, giant onions reproduce with glee. One bulb I left in place for four years had burgeoned into a most plump clump and produced twenty-five fat offsets by the time I dug it up. Look at the results in the picture below.

Yes, as this photo of your humble deponent in his garden attests, it is possible to have too much success with giant onions.

Word Lore of Onion

Onion < oignon French < unio, unionis Late Latin, a unity, a oneness of note < unus Latin, the numeral one. This word that gives modern English union also was used to name, for example, a single, large pearl. Farmers adapted it to name a big, eating onion, a scrumptious oneness indeed, a delectable unity.

Uses

There are many reports of early uses of the wild Canada onion. The Blackfoot (Siksika) of Alberta made a tea of wild onion bulbs to soothe throats raw from coughing and to suppress the cough. Sinus congestion was treated on early prairie farms by inhaling smoke from a little bonfire of onion bulbs. All of the First Peoples of America had words to name wild onions. One of note is Cheyenne kha-a-mot-ot-kewat ‘skunk testicles.’ Eaten raw in too great a quantity, wild onion bulbs are toxic enough to cause gastroenteritis in young children.

Onions as Herbs

Common names of Allium species with herbal use: Chives, Garlic, Leek, Scallion, Shallot, Top Onion.

 

Shallot

Allium ascalonicum is one horticultural designation for the shallot, the fine little onions of French cookery, mild in flavour and aroma, used in salad dressings, chopped and sprinkled on steak, and with dozens of uses in haute cuisine. The shallot has a compound bulb, with each “clove” wrapped in a papery, purple tunic. The specific is Botanical Latin meaning ‘of Ashkelon ,’ which was one of the five cities of the Philistines, a harbourless seaport in the land of Canaan. The other cities were Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza. Known as Askalon and Escalone in European languages, it was the site of a victory by the Crusaders over the Egyptians in A.D. 1099. It is mentioned in one of the most quoted phrases from the Old Testament, in the second book of Samuel 1:19-20, when King David laments the deaths of Saul and Jonathon: “How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.”

 

David's Farewell to Jonathan, Rembrandt van Rijn 1642, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

 

Word Lore of Shallot

Shallot < chalotte Early Modern French < eschalotte, eschalette Medieval French < eschaloigne Old French = scalogno Italian <*scalonia Late Latin < caepa ascalonia Latin, onion of Ashkelon.

 

That Scallywag Scallion

Note that from escalogne, an Old Norman French form of this common onion word, Middle English derived scalyon, which in turn gives another onion word still used in English, scallion.

 

Adding a Bit of Confusion

The perennial forms of the common onion, Allium cepa (caepa Latin, onion) are sometimes called shallots. But these have no connection with Ashkelon , nor with the delicate mildness of taste of true shallots. The true botanical name of shallots is partially responsible for the present confusion, because that true name of shallots is Allium cepa aggregratum (Latin, clustered, said of the small bulbs).

 

Leek & Garlic Word Lore

Allium porrum (Latin, leek) is the biennial onion whose outer surface collects sand and soil grit. Always wash leeks well. The Latin porrum is also the source of the French word for leek, poireau. Porrum has the basic meaning of sword-poke or spear-poke, in reference to the shape of the leaves. The Latin word for leek is akin to the ancient Greek word for leek, prason, and possibly to a group of verbs in Germanic and Scandinavian languages such as porren Dutch, ‘to poke as with a sword,’ and Danish purre, ‘to prod, to thrust.’ A porr was once a fire poker in English, and we had a verb too, to porr = to poke something with a spear.

The habit of growth of members of the onion family has seen them named after their long, sword-like leaves, for example, ‘spear-leek’ in Old English was gar-leac, which has the current spelling: garlic.

Other Gar (Spear) Words

Compare the fish with the long, spear-like snout, the gar or garfish.

Those sturdy bardic souls who have fought their way through the monument of Old English poetry, “Beowulf” will remember its opening line:

Hwaet! we Gar-dena in geardagum theodcyninga...

“Lo! We (have heard) about the might of the Spear-Danes,’ kings in the early days…”

Gar is also one of the elements in old compound Teutonic warrior names.

Edgar was composed of the roots ead ‘rich’ + gar ‘spear.’

The two-part Teutonic names did not have to make sense. They were composed from an agreed-upon stock of words thought suitable to make up male warrior names.

Gerard and Gerhart contain gar ‘spear’ + hardt ‘hard.’

Gertrude, originally a male name, is made up of gar ‘spear’ + trud   ‘strength’

There are a number of Portuguese, Spanish and Italian surnames like Berengár and Beranger derived from the Teutonic name Beringar ‘bear-spear.’

King Hrothgar is a character in the poem “Beowulf.” His name is composed of the Anglo-Saxon elements hroth ‘fame’ + gar ‘spear. Through an old French form introduced into England after the Norman Conquest in 1066, this evolved into our familiar modern given name, Roger and its derived surname, Rogers.

 

Taking a Peek at A Welsh Leek

The leek is the plant symbol of Wales, and an essential of French cookery. The somewhat soft bulb and the lower leaves of leeks are used to flavour soups, stews, most versions of vichyssoise, and served by themselves cooked with lemon butter. Leeks are also boiled, chilled, and presented en vinaigrette.

Leek harvest from a 14th century Italian herbal

 

Legend says the Welsh symbol arose during a battle in which Cadwaladr, King of Wales, ordered his soldiers to stick sprigs of leek in their caps, so that during the tumult of battle Welsh troops could be distinguished from those of their enemy, led by King Edwin of Northumbria. The Welsh did so and won the engagement, and the symbolic leek recalls this victory.

Word Lore of Leek

Leek < leac Old English, leek, akin to locc Old English, a lock of hair, itself related to lokkr Old Scandinavian, hank of hair, and to lugos Greek, a pliant twig, a bendable stick of wood.

 

Garlic

Allium sativum (sativus Latin ‘cultivated,’ literally ‘able to be sown or planted’ < serere Latin, to sow) is common garlic.

Garlic Uses

One of the earliest mentions of the curative properties of garlic is in the Ebers papyrus from about 1500 B.C. where cancer is described and one of the treatments for hardened skin cancers is the external application of garlic paste. Hippocrates prescribed eating garlic as a treatment for uterine cancers. Some modern cancer research, still inconclusive, does involve garlic and other members of the onion family. And yes, your Polish grandmother was correct, garlic really is good for you. Among the chemical goodies in those little cloves are antibiotics like allicin, a powerful bactericide, and allistatin, a broad-spectrum fungicide. My Scottish grandmother’s rule was one raw slice of ‘onion every day to keep colds at bay and the doctor away.’

 

Chives

Allium schoenoprasum (Botanical Latin < schoinos Greek, rush, reed + prason Greek, leek) is chives, one of the smaller onions, whose fresh leaves have been chopped and added to various foods for more than five thousand years. As one of the fines herbes of French cuisine, chives give a modest hint of onion to many a sauce or main dish. Chives perk up sour cream, cottage cheese, cream cheese, and a moderate sprinkle will brighten an omelette.

The word chive entered English from an Old French dialectal variant of Old French cive, itself from caepa or cepa Latin ‘onion.’ Compare chivot, the word for green onion in the northern French dialect of Picardy.

 

Scallions

Green onions or spring onions, scallions are really just immature seedling onions, plucked before they mature, to preserve the tender hint of onion they deliver to chopped salads, herb butters and dozens of other dishes. Scallion derives from the same Latin word as shallot.

And that's all we are peeling off the onion today.