Like many of my previous encounters, this one too happens during my morning ramble. Meet Ramgoat dashalong. What was the name again, I hear you ask.
The little plant with its sunny bloom goes by this rather mysterious and unaccountable name; besides its given scientific name of Turnera ulmifolia.
Nicknames can be singularly apt and like mother-in-law’s seat, likely to stick (pardon the pun)! But not so in this particular case. What ram, or goat, or dashing along have to do with a stationary specimen of the plant kingdom is lost in the swirling mists of etymology. While the vision of a billy-goat (ram-chagol in Bengali) dashing along a tropical field of yellow blooms a la Rudolf is unforgettable; the missing link between the name and the vision remains… missing, so to speak.
I name thee..
This is however not the only instance of man bestowing entirely unsuitable names to his fellow creatures on the planet. Many are the shy, retiring creatures who have been catapulted into the notorious weird-name list thanks to our penchant for the bizarre. Satanic leaf gecko, common toadflax, cock-tailed tyrant, witch’s butter! A delightful dagger moth which delights none; a pleasing fungus beetle which fails to please; a monkey puzzle tree which involved some monkeying around! Why look that far even? A mushroom is neither mushy nor roomy. From no angle whatsoever can a hippopotamus be mistaken for a horse. A ladybird is neither a lady nor a bird, as any beetle can tell you. Flights of imagination, fuelled no doubt by certain varieties of the afore-mentioned mushrooms!
For every human with a fanciful imagination there is one with none whatsoever. Like those who focus only on the tail end. Wagtail, fantail, forktail, pintail.. Or those who saw the apple of their eye everywhere – in a pine-apple, custard apple, ice-apple, wood-apple, rose-apple and even a love-apple! The French went a step further, even calling the potato an apple – pomme de terre!
Putting a name to the face
In the field of nomenclature, Homo sapiens is notoriously biased. While happily (and somewhat imaginatively) bestowing wisdom and greatness on his own species, his policy when christening other species is to merely to name and shame. A shoebill. A sarcastic fringehead. A monkeyface prickleback. Sometimes they put a name to the voice. A screaming hairy armadillo. A horned screamer. A monotonous lark. As Oscar Wilde said and I quote
“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.”
While scientists assure us that a great deal of sapient thought goes into naming a new species, they are only humans. And brainstorming sessions can sometimes produce nothing more erudite than a Dik-dik, and an Aha! moment can only produce an Aha ha wasp (please note the extra syllable! ) We understand completely why snack-deprived biologists in the wild begin to see their favourite food everywhere, – a chocolate chip starfish, a pancake batfish and even a fried-egg jellyfish, but an ice-cream cone worm does take the cake!
All this is Verae peculya! What was the name again? Its the name of a newly discovered wasp!
A change of name
As is clear from these examples, bequeathing names (as opposed to calling names) is a challenging process. Which is why a battalion of aunts, grandparents, and seers step in to aid new parents choose the all-important name for their progeny. Yet, auspicious planetary positions can be easily miscalculated by a few hundred metres; (given the huge distances involved) causing much misfortune and discontent. However, this can be easily remedied by the simple process of renaming. Or by adding a string of extra letters to the existing name to compensate for the miscalculation.
This discontent with given names is all-pervasive. The casual ‘what’s in a name‘ attitude popularised by a medieval bard finds no favour in modern times. Streets, lanes, airports, colleges, parks, towns, cities and even nations are being renamed in a flurry of rechristening activity. Sadly (or happily), they remain the same in all but in name. These frequent changes merely give a bad name to the ability of human beings to bestow a name.
So when someone comes up to you at the next crowded party and asks ‘What was the name again?’ And follows it up with a mumbled apology, ‘I’m terrible at names’, smile right back. Never was a truer word spoken!