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Leucistic?

That’s the word that prompted this column. I saw it in a newspaper article about white moose. Moose are customarily brown. These white moose were not albinos. They did not have little red eyes and shop for grits at Piggly-Wiggly stores.

I knew that the word leucistic contained the Greek word for white, leukos. Four to six of these white moose dwell in blissful moositude near Foleyet, a tiny railway whistlestop in Northern Ontario. The uncommon colour pattern of these white moose is not due to albinism. Leucistic animals are the offspring produced when both parent moose possess a recessive gene. When two bearers of this shy gene mate, the gene gets expressed and the result is the birth of offspring having mostly white hair instead of normal brown moose hair. Of course, albino moose do exist also.

“Leucism is a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation in animals. Unlike albinism, it is caused by a reduction in all types of skin pigment, not just melanin.”

 

Medical Words containing the root Leuco- or Leuko-

leuk-em-ia

leukos white + em short for haima blood + -ia medical condition

Leukemia is blood cancer, a progressive, malignant neoplasm of

leukocyte-forming elements in the blood and bone marrow.

 

leuko-cyte

leukos Greek, white + kytos Greek cell

A leukocyte is a white blood cell or in its older, obsolescent name, white corpuscle (corpusculum Latin ‘little body’ from Latin corpus ‘body’ + -culus, -cula, -culum common Latin diminutive suffix).

The many kinds of leukocytes fight disease by such ploys as engulfing germs, dead cells, and other hematic debris.

Leukocytosis is an abnormal increase in the number of white cells in the blood, often seen in bacterial, but not viral, infections.

 

leuko-rrhea

leukos white + -rrhoia Greek, a flowing through, a discharge, that gives other English medical terms like diarrhea and dysmenorrhea

Leukorrhea is any white, thickish vaginal discharge, often indicating vaginal or uterine infections and other disorders.

 

Leukos: Its Relatives in Other Indo-European Languages

Greek leukos has surprising cognates. Relatives of leukos appear in other Indo-European languages. In English light is from the same IE root. So is the German noun Licht ‘light.’ Also related is the Latin word for light, lux lucis. Lux is a contraction of the prime nominative form, *lucs. The Latin word for moon, luna, stems from the same root. At night the moon is ‘the white one.’

English borrowings from Latin lux, lucis forms include translucent and Lucifer.

 

Dixitque Deus “Fiat lux” et facta lux est.

Latin from The Vulgate, Genesis 1:3

And God said, “Let there be light” and there was light.

 

album

The common Latin adjective meaning flat white is albus, alba, album. English and the Romance languages contain dozens of derivatives. The Latin noun album meant a white tablet on which important edicts or events were inscribed. From this meaning derive all later meanings, including the English album to hold photographs. The Greek word for this ancient white writing tablet was leukoma.

albumen – literally ‘whiteness’ was the white of an egg in Latin, a synonym for the earlier, simpler Latin album ovi. Eggwhites contain a chemical called albumin.

 

alb – a kind of surplice worn by priests and clerics, a vestment of white cloth that touches the wearer’s feet, from ecclesiastical Latin tunica alba.

aube – The French word for dawn stems from soldiers’ Latin alba, the dawn, the “white” part of the day, when light returns. An aubade was a song or music originally intended to be sung or played in the morning. An aubade was the opposite of a serenade, music to be performed in the evening (serenus Latin ‘late in the day, at twilight’) when, one hoped, after the cares of the day, one could rest serenely and enjoy the serenity of the early evening.

The Alps, the European mountain range, were often snow-covered year round, and were hence “the white mountains.” Some etymologists say the root word is *alb- ‘hill, mountain’ or alp ‘mountain meadow.’ I suggest these are all basically ‘white’ words. The alpine cow agrees with me.

Albion is a poetic name for Britain, referring to the White Cliffs of Dover, a geographic feature noted by the first Roman invaders.

Albania - a derivation from the Proto-Indo-European root *albho-, which meant 'white'; referring perhaps to the snow-capped mountains of Albania. Other etymologists think the source may be a non-Indo-European root *alb-, meaning "hill, mountain", also present in alp "mountain pasture." German Alm "seasonal mountain pasture" is a reduced form of Alben, the original dative singular of Albe. In Alemannic German, Alp remains current. The word is originally identical to the name of the Alps itself, probably a pre-Roman (and possibly pre-Indo-European) term for "mountain.” I think it meant ‘high mountain’ hence snow-capped mountain, hence ‘white mountain,’ and thence its ancient prime meaning was ‘white.’ It is related both to Latin albus and the Semitic triliteral l-b-n ‘white.’ See the entry below for the Semitic relative.

Cognates of Albus

Old High German had Elbiz, a word for swan ‘the white bird.’

Gaelic alp ‘a high mountain’

Irish ailp ‘high mountain’

 

A Semitic Relative?

Is albus, the Latin word for ‘white,’ related to the Semitic triliteral l-b-n that means ‘white’? I think so. The Semitic root, common in Arabic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic words, shows up in the name of the country Lebanon.

لبن ا ن (Lubnān in standard Arabic, ‘Libnén' in local dialect)

It refers to Mount Lebanon, often snow-capped. It is a very old name, references occurring in the tablets of what may be the world's first novel, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written about 2900 BCE. The name is frequent in the Old Testament. Lebanon is recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphics as Rmnn, where Egyptian /r/ stood for Phoenician /l/ since the ancient Egyptians had as much trouble with certain pronunciations of /l/ as oriental peoples today have with /r/, frequently replacing it with /l/.

Leban is a yoghurt-like Arabic drink made from sour milk, whose name contains the Semitic root for white, l-b-n.

Laban Hebrew לָבָן   – is a man mentioned in the Old Testament. In Genesis 29:16 Laban is the father of Rachel and Leah. His name in Hebrew means ‘white.’ Modern Israeli pronunciation sees the letter beth modified to a /v/ to obtain 'Lavan.'

Libya

I believe the name of this North African country may also stem from a pre-Semitic “white” word.

ليب يا Libiya

The toponym Libya is of Berber origin. It is very old and is also mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts and inscriptions as:

R'bw (= Libu) We spoke above about the Egyptian /r/ for Semitic /l/ rule.

In ancient texts about Libya the Egyptians tell of the invasion of the Saharan country at the end of the third millennium BCE by a light-skinned, blond, blue-eyed people called by the Egyptians, the Temehu. Could any other ancient candidates settling in North Africa be better called ‘white ones’ by their duskier neighbours? I think indeed that this l-b-n root came into Semitic languages from much deeper in Africa where these odd blonds merited the adjective ‘white ones.’

All of this is anathema and heresy to ordained academic etymologists. But, as word scientists Greenberg and Ruhlen posited, all human language began in Africa. As the next hundred years of etymological probing will attest (so I believe) coherent utterance sprang from humanoid lips first in the Rift Valley, and this “white” root began there. So here, perhaps, we have an ur-etymon of the oldest provenance!

To learn more of Ruhlen and Greenberg, google them.

In a future column I’ll write about some other “white” roots, that appear in words like Weiss, blank, whiten, Russian белый (byelay) and carte blanche.

But, until then, this is a white-out.

 

Copyright © 2008 William Gordon Casselman