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.
Copyright ©
Maurice Rigoler
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