LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 14.OCT.1999 (01) [E]

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From: Jan Ter Ellen [Jan at spherical-group.demon.co.uk]
Subject: Etymology (Granaat)

Related to the discussion about _Granaat_ and _garnaal_.

A Belgium friend told me that there is an old Walloon word _guernette_,
which means the same as the more common _crevette_.  I have not beem
able to verify this, as my fairly basic French dictionary doesn't show
it.

Jan ter Ellen

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

Ron

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.

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

Chambers Dictionary takes a different view from you, suggesting that the
garnet is named

either after the pomegranate (OFr grenat, from LL granatum)

or from LL granum, meaning "grain", "cochineal", "red dye".

On the whole I think the moustache origin is to be preferred to the colour.

But I've just noticed another possible linguistic connexion between
shellfish and red colours. Our "crimson" comes from Persian and Arabic
"qirmiz", which is not a million miles from Gr. "gammaros". (There is a
non-linguistic connexion with cochineal as well here.)

Of course, there is a material as opposed to a linguistic connexion in that
the old dye "Tyrian purple" (actually a crimson) was obtained from the
rotted bodies of various Mediterranean shellfish.

John Feather
johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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