When I’ve been working with Comenius’ book, 99% of it has been trouble free, but then there is the 1%! Sometimes, it is deciphering the 17th century translation where we can discover a treasure trove of English words that we never knew existed! However, the task can also be working out why Comenius chose a particular Latin word or phrase, especially when there was no original Classical Latin term. We must remember that this is during the Renaissance period, a time of new discoveries – with the need to find new terms to describe them.
Therefore, today’s “task” was: Why does Comenius in 1658 use
the term lūteola peregrīna to refer to a canary?
Both parts are CL words:
[i] lūteus, -a, -um: yellow; bright yellow; saffron coloured
> lūteolus, -a, -um: (diminutive form) yellowish
The term is used as a descriptor for a number of species, for
example:
vigna luteola, a type of vine with yellow flowers
sicalis luteola: grassland yellow finch
[ii] peregrīnus, -a, -um: strange; foreign exotic; the noun peregrīna,
-ae [1/f] meaning ‘a foreign woman’ is attested in the work of Terence
We see the derivative in peregrine falcon (falcō, -nis
[3/m] peregrīnus) i.e. a ‘wandering’ / migratory falcon.
Therefore, lūteola peregrīna literally means ‘the
yellowish foreigner’ or ‘a foreign yellowish (bird)’.
The bird had been introduced to Europe by Spanish sailors from
the Canary Islands in the 15th century. By the time Comenius’ work
was published, the canary was bred locally, but still had a ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’
association.
Image #1: The German edition of Orbis Pictus refers to
the bird as ‘der fremde Canarienvogel’ (the foreign canary bird).
However, even in the 17th century, lūteola
peregrīna does not appear to be the standard term for it. Online search
does not find this attested in any other work apart from this one.
Image #2: Between 1551 and 1558 Conrad Gessner published the Historia
Animalium, the first modern attempt to create a complete inventory of every
known animal on earth. In Book 3 he describes birds, specifically referring to
the canary as (avis) canaria.
canārius, -a, -um: (adjective) pertaining to dogs; Pliny the Elder uses the term Canāria to refer to one of what are now known as the Canary Islands owing to the presence of large dogs.
Images #3 and #4:
It was not until the mid 18th century that Carl
Linnaeus created the modern system for naming and grouping plants and animals
by giving every living thing a two-part Latin name based on its physical traits.
Linnaeus coined the term fringilla canaria in 1758; the same
expression is also listed at:
https://neolatinlexicon.org/latin/canary/
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727088#page/200/mode/1up
Image #5: passer, -is [3/m] canārius (used in a later edition
of Comenius’ own work)
Image #6: avis, -is [3/f] canariēnsis (complete English To
Latin Dictionary Of 1838); note Linn. in the second definition i.e. referring
to the classification by Linnaeus.
Over time, we can see that the original term used in Comenius’ work – which may have been either an independent attempt to describe the bird, or a light-hearted way of describing it to appeal to 17th century school pupils – became far more specific.
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