LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 20.OCT.1999 (04) [E]

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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Etymology

Anja Meyfarth wrote:

>>John Feather wrote:

> I'm not really happy about the suggested connexions between shrimps and
> garnets and pomegranates for the following reasons:
>
> 1. (Cooked) lobsters are red, shrimps are pink. If lobsters were called
> *granaat (etc) it would be more convincing.

Deep Sea shrimps are indeed pink, but not the even smaller ones from the
North Sea. They are red, no doubt about that. It must be a different
species.

> 2. It seems unlikely that pomegranates or garnets were familiar objects to
> the earliest catchers, boilers, eaters and namers of  shrimps.

Well, for the islands of North Frisia I`m not convinced of your hypothesis.
I don`t know how old the name "Granat" for North Sea shrimps really is, but
the people of those mentioned islands were quite wealthy in the 17th and
18th
century. They will have known the stones not only by name but by sight,
too.<<

Perhaps it's time to have a discussion about the names we give to different
colours. I have no hesitation in saying that North Sea shrimps caught and
cooked on  this side of the North Sea are pink, not red.

We have already traced a Dutch word "gheernaert" to before the 16th century.
When I mentioned "the earliest catchers, etc" I was trying to get at the
idea that if you assume a name derived from luxury goods such as garnets or
pomegranates you are also implicitly assuming that there was an earlier
name, because the fishermen must have called them something for as long as
they've been standing around in freezing water to catch them.

Perhaps when quoting from De Vries's "Etymologisch Woordenboek" I should
have added that he makes no connexion between "gheernaert" and "granaat",
which he derives from OFr "grenat".

John Feather
johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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