Further to my previous blog on the origins of the name 'rowan' as in Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, I've received quite a few responses.
http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/what-do-you-cal.html
Two of the most interesting are that a collectivity of Church of England Archbishops should be known not as a 'Beatitude', as suggested by me, but as a 'pair', since there are only two of them!
And this is the definitive definition of 'rowan', as sent me by an admirer of the Archbishop:
"The name "rowan" is derived from the Old Norse name for the tree, raun or rogn. Linguists believe that the Norse name is ultimately derived from a proto-Germanic word *raudnian meaning "getting red" and which referred to the red foliage and red berries in the autumn. Rowan is one of the most familiar wild trees in the British Isles, and has acquired numerous English folk names. The following are recorded folk names for the rowan: Delight of the eye (Luisliu), Mountain ash, Quickbane, Quickbeam, Quicken (tree), Quickenbeam, Ran tree, Roan tree, Roden-quicken, Roden-quicken-royan, Round wood, Round tree, Royne tree, Rune tree, Sorb apple, Thor's helper, Whispering tree, Whitty, Wicken-tree, Wiggin, Wiggy, Wiky, Witch wood, Witchbane, Witchen, Witchen tree. Many of these can be easily linked to the mythology and folklore surrounding the tree. In Gaelic, it is Rudha-an (red one, pronounced quite similarly to English "rowan")".
My correspondent comments:
I like 'delight of the eye!.
Personally, I like 'rune', 'wiggin', 'wiggy' and 'wilky', mainly because I've absolutely no idea what they mean, but they conjour up great age and wisdom!
Goodness knows how one would translate these into Hebrew, though!
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