The Butterfly

The Butterfly O butterfly, o butterfly how and by whom did you come by your name? Theories abound yet all ring hollow and improbable. Least credible, if not absurd, it’s based on an Old English word “buterfleoge” and is speculated to witches reincarnated into butterflies in order to steal milk and butter. That, too, is rank and foolish superstition and groundless supposition. Lastly, based on sound alone (or assonance as it’s known), “flutter-by” rings close to butterfly though a desperate nice try. Truth is, all attempts to ascertain the how and why of its name has failed inasmuch as few animal names correspond to the physical attributes of a creature’s true identity, and even then the analogy is fanciful and far from reality. (A good example of this is is what ancient naturalists called a “river horse” known to us today as the hippopotamus.) Thanks to Swedish botanist Linnaeus, and a fluent Latinist who, in one stroke, reduced a plethora of butterfly names to one, “Lepidoptera.” Thus did away with all indigenous names for the butterfly, sparing every botanist from having to tediously memorize a slew of foreign names when one would do. Here’s what I mean and care to learn. Be rewarded for your concern, In Greek, butterfly is“petaloudia,” a wing or a leaf or something similar. In French it’s popularly “papillon,” which nicely rhymes with “avion.” Italians know it as “farfalla,” the shape of a favorite pasta. In Spanish it’s “Mariposa,” alluding to the virgin’s supposa ascent into heaven, an event in scripture glaringly absent? For Germans, for whom nothing is simple, it’s a “schmetterling.” Russians followed with“babochka” but pronounced it as “babushka” which every Russian and his brother knows is a head scarf or a grandmother! And so, my pretty butterfly, whatever name you have come by, I delight in you just as you are, named or unnamed, I don’t care. And here’s a thought the reader would do well to consider and should: If Shakespeare’s plays were written by another we have yet to identify would his genius have suffered if, he went by the name Snakesniff? And, would champagne’s fame be less bubbly by some other name? Life’s too short to wrack one’s brain on matters impossible to explain. For – and I’m convinced of this – beauty is beauty whatever it is.