ABSTRACT
French violette; in English ca. 1330, and applied to the rayless kinds according to Mabberley 1997); fiol (from Latin viola, Norwegian); Veilchen (veil, violet, -chen, little, German); viola (Italian, Portuguese); violeta (Spanish, Portuguese); violette (French); viooltje
[violetje(s), violet ten] (Dutch); vion [ion, io] (Greek, cf. Russell 1965) xtha-çka tsu-hu (xtha, flower, çka, white, tu-hu, blue?, Osage)
Viola bicolor (two-colored) cupid’s-delight (the same idea as the British name “love-in-idleness”) field daisy (“daisy” is usually applied to Bellis perennis, Asteraceae) field pansy (“pansy” was derived ca. 1500 from French pensée,
thought) heart’s-ease [heartsease] (first recorded in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tales in
the 1400s, where he wrote, “And wisly bringe hem alle in hartes eese”; the origin is uncertain, but the sense is tranquillity or peace of mind, England)
Johnny-jump-up (“Johnny” [Johnnie] is a contemptuous nickname given to Englishmen in the Mediterranean, and to Confederate soldiers during the Civil War)
kiss-me-at-the-garden-gate (England) love-in-idleness (England) three-faces-under-a-hood (from 1548, England) wild pansy
Viola conspersa (sprinkled, from the dotted lower leaf surface) American dog-violet (the “dog-violet” of Europe is V. canina; so
named because it lacks scent; see Scott 1995)
Viola sororia (sisterly, resembling other species) bayou violet (“bayou” is a variant of the Choctaw word bayok,
meaning marshy branches of rivers and lakes; in use by 1763) chicken-fights (Maryland); fighting cocks; akankittibi’chi’ (akanka’,
chicken, ittibichi’, to make fight, Chickasaw); dinda’skwate’ski (they pull each other’s heads off, Cherokee)
Confederate violet (an allusion to the name Johnny-jump-up) Johnny-jump-up[-and-kiss-me] long-stemmed purple violet rooster-hoods [roosters] (North Carolina) sister violet (a “scholarly” translation without consulting people who
use common names) [blue prairie, common blue, downy blue, hooded blue, meadow] violet
What could the violet and the peacock moth possibly have in common? Both were dedicated to Io, the beautiful Greek priestess. The violet in Latin is Viola, which is related to the Greek Vion, a variant of Io. The moth is Automeris io, named by Philipp Conrad Fabricius (1714-1774) to honor that goddess-or perhaps to warn of her dangers as the larvae are covered with stinging hairs.
