Spanish ballena = whalefrom L. ballaena, whence E. baleen
"They called it a what?"
Dionysus was the Greek god of wine, fertile crops, and, uhh, regeneration. He was celebrated once a year in a series of festivals containing ceremonies that are regarded as the origin of Greek drama, which was the forerunner of all Western drama. Other ceremonies were devoted to frolicking. The opening ceremony for the frolickers was a parading of the phallos pole, which had the shape of a very large you-know-what. There were sea monsters at the time and the Greeks, no small thinkers, likened the shape of certain of those to the phallos. Greek phallaina (whale) resulted.
Greek phallaina became Latin ballaena, upon which Spanish ballena (whale) and English baleen (whalebone) are formed.
In the whaling days, ladies in whalebone corsets graced drawing rooms lighted by whale-oil lamps. What saved the whales (and killed the whaling industry) was not human kindness. Hardly that. It was the discovery of cheaper underground oil to replace that siezed from undersea monsters.As a point of interest, there are two kinds of whales: those with teeth and those with baleen (whalebone) instead of teeth. The baleen group includes the blue whales (see above), the largest animals ever to have lived. Their whalebone acts as a sieve to strain plankton and tiny crustaceans from sea water. Yum-oh.
Copyright © 2007 - Jerry Schnell - All rights reserved
1 comment:
Thanks Baja Mensa Club, I am pleased that my etymological searched ended with such a prestigious group that, in fact, had the answer I was looking for and pondering. My wife (DignaRosa in the email below) a Spanish teacher was asking about how whales reproduced as her class had wondered why ballena was feminine. I mentioned that I believed that Spanish word derived from the same meaning as our English word Balene hence the derivation was toward a sieve like structure that could be imputed to be feminine. As opposed to the assumed personification of a big and powerful whale that clearly begs to be assumed masculine (political correctness not withstanding, as pretty sure the Greeks were not too concerned about this). Thus it is not too surprising to find that the realize root was phallic allusions. Which only leaves me to further ponder where the word whale came from and how the English construed something large and pointed into a filter?
Thanks for your help. Lon R. Davis
Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
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