Pomegranate - A Naming Error

A detail from Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranate (c.1487) introduces the story of a mistake that appears in every dictionary in the world that defines the word pomegranate.

This exquisite painting hangs today in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy. The picture’s title refers to the pomegranate held in the Virgin Mary's hand with the fruit touched by the baby Jesus too. Pious critics have opined that this symbolizes Christ’s passion, the wealth of the pomegranate’s many seeds suggesting the manifold nature of Christ’s suffering or the seminal inspiration that Christ may be, planting the seeds of faith in multitudes.

In antiquity the pomegranate symbolized, by its seminiferous uberousness, the many-seeded fertility of humans, animals and fields. Technically the fruit is a berry and appears to have been grown as a small cultivated tree early in the Bronze Age in the area now called Iran. Grenadine is made from the lush red berry juice.

In planning this painting, Botticelli may have seen Roman depictions of the goddess Proserpine (to the Greeks Persephone) bearing a pomegranate. Each spring she returned to the good Roman earth bringing new abundance and the green skyward dance of sprouting crops. As Byron wrote in Giaour “pomegranate’s blossoms strew/Their bloom in blushes ever new.”

True, pomegranate is not a Canadian word, but Canucks pop the red seeds of this fruit and enjoy the little explosions of acidic crimson juice that tartle the taste buds. Don’t look up the verb to tartle. I made the word up. Pomegranate’s flavour is vividly tart or acid “like the juice of unripe raspberries” as French writer André Gide once wrote. When it hits the surprised tongue, a pomegranate seed tartles. For an awakened palate, 'tis indeed a tart startlement.

Origin of the Word

The path of pomegranate’s etymology is clear. In Middle English it was poumgarnet and pomegranard, borrowed from Middle French pomme grenate, from Old French pome grenate, from pome apple, fruit + grenate seedy, from Latin pomum granatum ‘apple of many seeds.’

The Exploding Pomegranate

By the middle of the seventeenth century, the French word for pomegranate grenade was used in English to name a small round bomb-like device that was tossed into enemy trenches where it exploded sending its seeds of death, bits of shrapnel, into enemy bodies.

Semitic Root Word for Pomegranate

Ancient Egyptian shares with Arabic and Hebrew the pomegranate trilitteral root ‘r-m-n.’ The Hebrew word is rimmôn. Sometimes scrolls bearing the Torah are kept in hollow silver pomegranates called rimmonim that are slipped down over the upper scroll handles. One of the ceremonial foods of the Jewish New Year feast of Rosh Hashanah is the pomegranate, included because the fruit is a symbol of righteousness, the 613 pomegranate seeds corresponding to the 613 mitzvot, the Torah commandments.

The Portuguese and Maltese words for pomegranate, romã and rumen stem from Arabic rummân.

Greek Words for Pomegranate

For some Greek weddings, tradition dictates pomegranates as one of the wedding foods. The modern Greek word polysporia refers to the fruit’s ‘many seeds’ as did its ancient Greek name panspermia ‘all seed.’

The German word is Granatapfel ‘seeded apple.’

Roman Pomegranates

The Latin word for pomegranate was malum punicum ‘Carthaginian apple’ or malum granatum ‘seedy fruit.’ From Latin, Italian derives its word for pomegranate melograno or the less used feminine form melagrana.

Punic Fruit & Punic Wars

The pomegranate fruit is technically the fleshy, scarlet berry of an African and Asiatic tree, Punica granatum. One of the tree’s names in Latin was arbor punica, ‘the Carthaginian tree.’ Although the tree grows from southeast Europe right over to the Himalayas, the Romans first encountered it growing in vast groves in northern Africa in the Phoenician colony of Carthage, a city and an empire against whom the Romans were to wage three great wars, beginning with the First Punic War (264-241 BCE) when Rome won and captured Sicily. In the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE), the famous Hannibal and his elephants lumbered down the Alps to defeat. In the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE), the once mighty city of Carthage was obliterated from the sands of time. The great cry in the Roman Senate was “Cartago delenda est!” ‘Carthage must be destroyed!’ And so it was, utterly.

The Little Mistake Repeated Around The World

But the term for the pomegranate tree that finally influenced botanists when they came to name it was its description in the writings of Pliny the Elder, a Roman encyclopedist who termed the tree malum punicum ‘the Carthaginian apple.’ Somehow this got shortened to punica, which is the feminine of the Latin adjective punicus ‘Carthaginian.’ Then granatum was added as the specific name of the shrub-like tree. Granatum means ‘seedy, abounding in seed,’ but it is a neuter form of the adjective granatus,whereas the generic word punica is grammatically feminine. Even in present-day international botany, Latin nouns must agree in gender and number, as they did for millennia when Latin was a living, spoken tongue. But this does not happen in Punica granatum. Here is a case where scientists screwed up and will not correct their mistake.

The botanical name of the pomegranate tree should be Punica granata, not what it is in every botanical text on earth, namely Punica granatum. But the mistake is sanctioned by long use, and botanists will not change it. Granted, granatum is a small mistake, but it is not alone in botanical nomenclature where hundreds of clumsy fumblings in bad Latin word-making clutter otherwise pristine texts. I know I'm a fussbudget to say so, but scientists ought to correct their most easily seen errors.

Pomegranate harvest on ancient Egyptian wall painting

Pomegranates are eaten raw or made into a beverage. The fruit’s thick astringent sour rind was used formerly in medicine and tanning. Crushed together with pomegranate flowers it made a red dye.

Spanish sailors brought pomegranates with them on their exploratory sea voyages to the New World, and Spanish missionaries are credited with introducing pomegranates into California in the 1700s. Today most of the North American pomegranate crop is grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Pomegranates grow on a shrub-like tree with shiny green leaves and orangish-red flowers that bloom in the spring.

A large pomegranate holds about 800 seeds, which are surrounded by scarlet pulp filled with juice. These jewel-like, glassy red units, called arils, are compartmentalized between cream-colored membrane layers. The membranes are not good to eat, but the seeds won’t hurt you. Although some folks think they have to spit out the seeds, that is not necessary.

Throughout the Orient, the pomegranate has since earliest times occupied a position of importance alongside the grape and the fig. Some considered it the apple in the garden of Eden. According to the Bible, King Solomon possessed an orchard of pomegranates, and, when the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness, sighed for the abandoned comforts of Egypt the cooling pomegranates were remembered longingly. Centuries later, the prophet Muhammad remarked, “Eat the pomegranate, for it purges the system of envy and hatred.”

Pomegranate on a modern Israeli stamp

© 2005 William Gordon Casselman

..........................................................................................

Casselman's Canadian Words

Enjoy knowing Canadian words from all the provinces and territories?

Hundreds pop up in my book Casselman's Canadian Words, in print and available to be purchased or ordered in any Canadian bookstore.

Buying my books helps keep this website online.

BUY MY BOOKS ONLINE BY CLICKING HERE.

Click on book cover for a sample of the verbal goodies.

published by

McArthur & Company, Toronto

ISBN 1-55278-034-1

224 pages, illustrated

price: under $ 20 dollars CDN

................................................................

The Vocabula Review is one of the best current online journals about language. I'm a columnist there and hope you will visit Vocabula online.

Do so by clicking on the logo provided above or below. There is a modest annual subscription fee for reading the linguistic probings and jeux d'espirit of some of North America's best writers on language (he said with all due lack of humility). But you may taste an enticing free sample of Vocabula content by visiting the website www.vocabula.com or by clicking the top or bottom logo.

...................................................................................

HOME

BUY BOOKS ONLINE / Submit Sayings / Photos / Contact / Links / Site Map

pomegranate origin of word

pomegranate symbolism

pomegranate mistake in all dictionaries

Madonna of the Pomegranate

Hebrew and Arabic pomegranate words

Carthaginian apple

malum punicum

botany lore of pomegranate