The generic name of the fern _Ceterach officinarum_ is generally said to be
derived from the Arabic _Chetherak_. I find however, among a list of
ancient British names of plants, published in 1633 at the end of Johnson's
edition of Gerard, the expression _cedor y wrach_, which means _the joined_
or _double rake_, and is exactly significant of the form of the Ceterach.
The Fernrakes are joined as it were back to back; but the single prongs of
the one alternate botanically with those of the other. Master Robert
Dauyes, of Guissaney in Flintshire, the correspondent of Johnson, gives the
name of another of the Filices (_Equisetum_) as the English equivalent of
the ancient British term. But the form of this plant does not at all
correspond to that signified by the Celtic words. It is not improbable,
therefore, that he was wrong as respects the correct English name of the
plant.
The Turkish _shetr_ or _chetr_, to cut, and _warak_, a leaf, seem to point
out the meaning of the Arabic term quoted in Hooker's _Flora_ and
elsewhere. Probably some of your Oriental readers will have the kindness to
supply the exact English for _chetherak_.
It appears to me, however, that the transition from _cedorwrach_ to
_ceterach_ is more easy, and is a more probable derivation.
Hooker and Loudon say that another generic name, _Veronica_, is of doubtful
origin. In the Arabic language I find _virunika_ as the name of a plant.
This word is evidently composed of _nikoo_, beautiful, and _viroo_,
remembrance; viroonika. therefore means beautiful remembrance, and is but
an Oriental name for a Forget-me-not, for which flower the _Veronica
chamædrys_ has often been mistaken. Possibly the name may have come to us
from the Spanish-Arabian vocabulary. The Spaniards call the same plant
_veronica_. They use this word to signify the representation of our
Saviour's face on a handkerchief. When Christ was bearing his cross, a
young woman, the legend says, wiped his face with her handkerchief, which
thenceforth retained the divine likeness.[1]
The feminine name _Veronica_ is of course the Latin form of [Greek:
Pheronikê], victory-bearer (of which Berenice is the Macedonian and Latin
construction), and is plainly, thus derived, inappropriate as the
designation of a little azure wild flower which, like loving eyes, greets
us everywhere.
In looking over Martin Mathée's notes on _Dioscorides_, published 1553, I
find that Italian women of his time used to make a cosmetic of the root of
the _Arum_, commonly called "Lords and Ladies." The mixture, he says, makes
the skin wondrously {538} white and shining, and is called _gersa_. ("_Ils
font des racines d'Aron de l'eaue et de lexive_," &c., tom. v. p. 98.)