False “cacographees” and “correct” English names: the quest for perfect botanical naming in early modern England

The chapter addresses a specific historical moment of the development of botanical nomenclature in England between the 16th and the 17th centuries. Selecting from the terminology used in the most important herbals and catalogues of the period, i.e. Turner (1548 and 1568), Lyte-Dodoens (1578), Gerard (1597), Gerard-Johnson (1633), Parkinson (1640) and Ray (1670), I will show that these compilations constitute a rich repertoire of neologisms, equivalents, regionalisms, and compounds that can be used to examine variation, continuity and change in terminology in this stage of the English language. To a certain extent, the nomenclature to designate plants represented a means to establish some order in a field that saw considerable, and often chaotic, expansion in the Renaissance. At the same time, close analysis of some of these terms suggests that explaining the lexical and semantic processes implicit in plant naming can contribute to reveal aspects of the early modern understanding of the vegetal world.