If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and is spelled like a duck, it may be a duck.
In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope (Homeric Greek Πηνελόπεια, Pēnelopeia, Modern Greek: Πηνελόπη, Pēnelopē) is the queen of Ithaca, daughter of Spartan king Icarius and naiad Periboea, and wife of the main character Odysseus. Penelope is faithful to Odysseus, despite the attention of more than a hundred suitors during his twenty-year absence in the Trojan War. She cunningly pretends to be weaving a burial shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s elderly father, to delay the suitors claiming that she will choose one of them when she has finished. But every night, she unravels part of the shroud she has weaved by day.
Like all Homeric proper nouns, the true meaning of Pēnelopeia is unknown because
its etymology is unclear. Hesychius of Alexandria (5th or 6th century AD) merely glosses πηνέλοψ (pēnelops) as some kind of
bird without specifying which. Robert Beekes suggests a Pre-Greek origin and a
potential relation to pēnelops (πηνέλοψ) or pēnelōps (πηνέλωψ), meaning
duck or wild goose with a colored neck
Πηνελόπεια: ép. depuis l’Od., - όπη (Hdt.,
Ar., etc.), Πανελόπα (AP 6,289). Pénélope, épouse d'Ulysse. Sûrement tiré de
πηνέλοψ (Solmsen, KZ 42, 1908, 232),
comme Μερόπη de Μέροψ; finale -εια par analogie avec Αντίκλεια, ηριγένεια, etc.,
cf. Risch, Worlb. der hom. Spr. § 50 c. Solmsen, KZ 42, 1908, 232
a raison de tirer l'anthroponyme de πηνέλοψ, mais il n'y a
aucune raison de penser qu'il s'agit d'une ancienne divinité en forme d'oiseau
; durant toute l'histoire du grec ancien des noms d'oiseau ont servi à dénommer
des femmes, cf. Περιστερά et Bechtel, H. Personennamen 591.
Toutes les autres explications de Πηνελόπεια sont ruineuses
Πηνελόπεια (Pēnelopeia): ep(ic). from Od., - όπη (-opē ; Hdt., Ar., etc.), Πανελόπα (Panelopa;
AP 6,289). Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Indeed taken from πηνέλοψ (Solmsen, KZ
42, 1908, 232), as Μερόπη (Meropē)
from Μέροψ (Merops);
final -εια (-eia) by
analogy with Αντίκλεια (Antikleia),
ηριγένεια (ērigeneia),
etc., cf. Risch, Worldb. der hom. Spr. § 50 c. Solmsen, KZ 42, 1908, 232 is correct in
deriving the anthroponym from πηνέλοψ (pēnelops), but there is no reason
to think that it is an ancient bird-like deity; throughout the history of
ancient Greek, bird names were used to name women, cf. Περιστερά (Peristera)
and Bechtel, H. Personennamen 591. All other explanations of Πηνελόπεια are
ruinous. (by Google Translation. Transliterations in italic are
mine)
Figure
1.
A Eurasian wigeon Anas penelope Linnaeus, 1758. Artwork by Bogbumper and Kuribo. Creative Commons license.
In
1758, the famous Swedish botanist, zoologist, and first modern taxonomist Carl von
Linnaeus (1707 – 1778) established the current biological classification system
with the publication of the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae
I know of no ancient text that adequately describes the eponymous bird. But if all those scholars have associated pēnelops with the duck, they must have known something! Perhaps the information has come to us through generations of authors whose books are now lost. We cannot expect Ancient Greeks to have precisely known the species of pēnelops, but we may expect that it was a fowl. Because these birds are of particular interest to humans. Fowl are the birds we eat, chickens, turkeys, game birds such as pheasants or partridges, other wildfowl like quail, guinea fowl or peafowl (peacock), and waterfowl such as ducks or geese. They are sizeable birds with a tapered, spindle-shaped (rugby ball, lemon) body with a characteristic sigmoid neck, producing relatively many eggs. In biological terms, there are two orders of fowl, landfowl (Fig. 2) and waterfowl (Fig. 3). The latter has a broad and elongated body and passes a lot of time floating, half submerged in water. Due to their aquatic nature, most species in the order are highly adapted for an aquatic existence at the water surface, and most species are web-footed.
Figure
2.
Landfowl species. Clockwise from the top left: Indian peafowl, red jungle fowl,
golden pheasant, Chukar partridge, Gunnison grouse, wild turkey, great
curassow, helmeted Guinea fowl. Artwork by MathKnight. Creative Commons license.
Figure
3.
Waterfowl. Clockwise from the top left: mallard, mute swan, Brazilian teal,
paradise shelduck, bufflehead, and greylag goose. Artwork by MathKnight. Creative Commons license.
The
most prominent characteristics of waterfowl are found in the name pēnelops.
The stem pēn is in πῆνος (pēnos)
meaning web, its diminutive πηνίον (pēnion), bobbin, spool, quill, i.e., a
weaver’s spindle, glossed by Hesychius as ἄτρακτος, (atraktos), spindle,
spindle-shaped, and the feminine πήνη (pēnē),
thread on the bobbin in the shuttle, woof, web. One of the senses of the word web
is interdigital
webbing, a skin membrane between the digits. The next cluster, elo, forms the word ἕλος (‘elos),
meaning marsh-meadow, generally, marshy ground, backwater, i.e., the natural
habitat of waterfowl. It does not really matter if pēnelops is a duck or a swan. The term describes a particular bird shape (spindle)
and behavior (half-submerged in the water), both characteristics of the waterfowl. This is what matters to our discussion.
The
challenge is the ending. Why would a duck be pēnelops and not *pēnelos,
from pēn’-, spindle, web, and elos, marsh? Beekes remarks that
the ending -ops (-οψ) appears in many other animal names, implying that -ops
signifies an animal. Indeed, there are a few such cases. One possibility is
that ops comes from ὄψις (opsis), aspect,
appearance, face, thing seen, sight, visual impression, or image of an object. In
that case, pēnelops would signify something that looks like a marsh spindle (e.g., a duck) in the pattern of μήλοψ (mēlops) – from μῆλον
(mēlon), apple, and ὄψις (opsis),
look – looking like an apple. More likely, given the order of the stems in the
compound word, pēnelops would translate a spindle-marsh, which
could not be a duck, at least in English.
Another
possible source of -ops is the independent word ὄψ (ops), voice, word. If that
were the case of pēnelops, the term might indicate something that
sounds like a duck (marsh-spindle). A definition of a duck as something that
sounds like a duck would not be informative. If we do not know what a duck is,
we do not know how it sounds. We must dig further into
literal and sub-literal semantics to solve this puzzle.
Curiously, the Modern Greek term πάπια (papia), duck, is used in the phrase κάνω την πάπια (literally, do like a duck), meaning to duck, to evade doing something. This sememe of evasion is in the mytheme of Penelope evading the suitors, presumably leading to the correct interpretation of Ithaca’s queen. Another gloss of papia is a kind of urinal with a broad and long neck for the sick or the elderly (Fig. 5). This meaning is also attributed to duck in English. While to duck is an analogy of the duck’s diving behavior, the duck urinal no doubt refers to the object’s shape and function. It has a spindle shape, like a fowl, with a characteristic nozzle and is half-filled (submerged) with water (urine) as part of its function.
The
same Greek πάπια lemma suggests that the Greek duck,
papia, is probably an onomatopoeia from the cry of ducks, pa-pa-pa!
In English, however, ducks do not papa but quack. Who to
believe? The echomimetic onomatopoeia theory may apply in exceptional cases, but
it is generally nonsense. This example shows that the sound we think an animal
makes derives from its name, not vice versa (see
section The ancestors of Odysseus).
Two more meanings of the English duck are necessary for the following discussion: a tightly-woven cotton fabric used
as sailcloth or a cave passage containing water with low or no airspace.
The stems traced in pēnelops are also found in the term we are trying to decipher, Penelope, Odysseus’ wife. Suppose Odysseus is the toilet flush, i.e., a designed massive and sudden water escape applied to the toilet (Ithaca), as it turns out (see section Odysseus). In that case, his wife is certainly neither a duck nor any of the birds for the waterfowl order. But it must have similar characteristics. We are looking for an important object that lives in the toilet (Queen of Ithaca) and looks like waterfowl, i.e., it has a spindle-shaped body with a sigmoid neck and it is half submerged in the water, with which Odysseus, the water flush, can have an intimate relationship. This may be the toilet bowl (Fig. 6).
Figure 6. Left: Four common types of toilet bowls: wash down (1), washout (2), double-trap siphon (3), and a single-trap siphon with jet (4). Upright and inverted antique toilet bowl with visible siphon outlet pipe. Artwork by SouthHamsian; Creative Commons license. Right: Commercial embossed elephant toilet bowl, Circa 1880, with visible double-trap siphon outlet (type 2); from VintageBathroom.com, N. Tonawanda, NY.
The toilet bowl has every feature needed to be called pēnelops and more. It is a waterfowl-shaped but inverse receptacle ending in a sigmoid neck-like pipe known as a trap. The trap permanently retains water to block unpleasant odors from the sewage pipes through the drain. This water is removed by siphoning at every flush but is immediately replaced. So, the bowl looks half submerged while the permanently stagnant water (elos) leaving no air passage makes the drain cave a duck.
The affordance of a pēnelops-type urinal (Fig. 5) and a flush toilet bowl (Fig. 6) is different. Most bed urinals (Greek ‘ducks’) are for urination only. The toilet bowl has a heavy-duty design affording both urination and defecation and is directly connected to the sewage network. In linguistic terms, the difference lies in the ending morpheme. Pēnelopeia replaces the simple Ψ ending (/ps/) of pēnelops, for orifice (P) protrusion (S), with the morpheme -peia, i.e., it retains the orifice sememe but replaces protrusion sememe with -eia. The removal of a protrusion (S) is expected because the toilet bowl has no nozzle. But, we may ask, what is -eia about?
Hesychius explains the independent word eia in its plural form εἰαί (eiai) as τῶν ὀσπρίων τὰ ἀποκαθάρματα, the excretions of legume pulses (i.e., edible seeds of various leguminous plants of the family of Fabaceae such as beans, lentils, and chickpeas). The word ἀποκάθαρμα (apokatharma) means excretion or slop, i.e., wastewater from a kitchen, bathroom, or chamber pot that has to be emptied by hand. These seeds are known in Greek culinary culture to cause intestinal discomfort. Indeed, dry beans are the richest source of dietary fiber, one of the main components of feces.
Table 1 scans the sequence PHNELOPEIA to find additional stems, cognates, and meanings. In summary, the sequence means urination and defecation in private. The left part, PHNELO, describes urination and peeing. Urine is a thin, long, continuous, far-reaching, slightly turbulent sprinkling – like a thread winded out from a spool – conveyed and driven away with rush and pressure, and forming a marsh; it involves hand grasping and taking out something (penis). The right part, OPEIA, expresses privacy regarding observation or looking around before doing something. According to Hesychius, this is excreting and defecation, of which the quantity and pressure typically increase by eating beans, as explained above. In the end, excretions are absorbed by the earth like rain. The reverse reading reveals infant care after excretion.
|
Stem
|
Cognates
|
Meanings
|
|
From left to right
|
|
|
|
PHNELO
|
duck
|
|
|
PH
or PHN
|
sprinkle, besprinkle, pour out, strew over, bespatter
any conveyance thread on the bobbin, woof, web, bobbin, spool, quill, spindle woof on the spool wind thread off a reel for the woof; wind off a reel weaver thread-like false hair |
|
|
HNE
|
far-stretching, continuously, without a break
bear or carry a load, bear, convey, bring, fetch, bring forth, produce, carry off, or away windy, airy, rapid, rushing, high-soaring, stirred, waved by the wind, filled by the wind |
|
|
ELO
|
take with the hand, grasp, seize, take away, get, obtain drive away, expel marsh-meadow, marshy ground, backwater
|
|
|
LOP
|
flat dish, shell-fish, oyster (compare lop, lobster)
|
|
|
OPE
|
ὀπεύει
(περισκοπεῖ, βλέπει), (ὀπάων) |
look round, examine, observe carefully, consider, see,
face, look, regard, behold
follower, attendant |
|
OPEIA
|
brigandage; instruments of observation; charge over one,
attendance
|
|
|
PEi
|
Pei letter; drink, drink up as the earth does rain;
anywhere
|
|
|
EIA
|
excretion, slop
|
|
|
From right to left
|
|
|
|
AEI
|
always
|
|
|
EIP
|
propose, move, say, name, mention
|
|
|
IPO
|
press, squeeze, dry
|
|
|
POLE
|
go about, range over, turn, turn up, revolve
|
|
|
OLEN
|
the arm from the elbow downwards, mat, mattress
|
|
|
LEN
|
Latin linteum,
cloth, napkin, towel, an attendant at the bath
|
|
|
EN
|
in, into, within, surrounded by; a combination into one,
union, compression
|
|
|
ENH
|
be seated in, sit within; nail to; anything driven in
|
|
|
NH
|
negative prefix; new, young
|
|
|
NHP
|
infant, child, without foresight, blind
|
|
Here is the evidence in detail. Hesychius glosses πῆ (pē) and πῆν (pēn) as καταπάσσειν (katapassein; gerund of καταπάσσω, katapassō), to besprinkle,
bespatter with, sprinkle, strew over, pour out, or its quasi-synonym πάσσω (passō), to lay upon, sprinkle
solids (salt, ashes, etc.). This gloss makes the stem pē a
cognate of English pee, to urinate, pass (urine,
blood, etc.) from the bladder, and pēn, a cognate of the penis.
To piss and the French pisser (to
piss), from Middle English pisse (noun)
and pissen (verb), or French pisser from
Old French pissier, all meaning to piss. These words
are suggested to derive from a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *pīssiō,
probably of ‘echoic’ origin, or *pissiare of
‘imitative’ origin. The
terms echoic and imitative refer to echomimetic onomatopoeia; because not all
onomatopoeia is echomimetic (see section Poetry). However,
pissing or passing stool makes no specific sound per se. Any sounds heard
depend on the surface where urine or stool fall. In my opinion, to piss
and pass (stool) display the I/A opposition signifying the thin (liquid)
versus thick (solid) or narrow versus broad (channel, orifice; see section Pipe). The prefix kata from katapassein is
retained in Modern Greek κατουρώ (katourō), to piss.
PHN also forms a series of words about weaving and
threads. These fit well the mytheme of Penelope weaving cloth, but Homer uses
the thread analogy to suggest the thin stream of urination. Words beginning
with HNE are about conveyance, describing the shape and the pressure of the
urine stream relating to the urgency of excretion, perhaps also introducing gas
excretion (wind) related to defecation. Next, ELO describes the
action of urinating (for males) and the resulting patch of urine on the ground.
LOP is about the slightly convex shape of the urine stream or, rather,
about making lopping strokes on the penis at the end of
urination.
The last part, OPEIA, is about the privacy required
for excretion. Words starting with OPE are about observation, attendance,
notably, looking around to ensure privacy. So do words ending with OPEIA. The
cluster PEI is associated with the verb πίνω (pinō), to dring, to absorb liquid. It suggests that urination
depends on the amount of liquid drunk or that the marsh of urine and other
excretions is eventually absorbed by the soil. Most part, if not the
entire term, explicitly describes urination. Defecation is possibly hidden
behind the otherwise common ending morpheme EIA. This may be why this ending
was dropped from the name of Penelope in later texts.
Reading the word backward, we sense instructions about
cleaning, caring for, and wrapping the part of the infant’s body below the
elbow with a soft cloth. That is the abdominal and genital area from the waist
to the knees. The antonymy created by this inversion contrasts our excreting
behavior with the care we take of our babies after excretion.
This analysis concludes that Penelope is not the
toilet bowl, despite its resemblance to a duck. It is rather urination or
excretion in general. That is another kind of deliberate massive water escape.
This one is a natural flush produced by a biological tubing system. Urination
(or excretion) and hydraulic flush married and lived together as a royal couple
in the toilet (Ithaca).
The semantic analysis of Penelope’s parents, Periboea and Icarius (Table 2), and their ‘kingdom’, Sparta (Table 3), through further insight into the nature of Odysseus’ wife. The most frequent epithet of Pēnelopeia is
περίφρων (periphrōn), overweening.
This is glossed as a derivative of φρήν (phrēn), meaning midriff, the region of the front of the
body between the chest and the waist, stomach, belly, and tummy. The prefix and
independent word περί (peri) means round about, all
around, regarding. Therefore, periphrōn means around
the abdomen, and periphrōn Pēnelopeia affirms the interpretation of Penelope as abdominal trouble. The most common form of
Icarius in Homer’s Odyssey is Ἰκαρίοιο (ikarioio; IKARIOIO).
Table 2. Semantic scan
of Icarius (IKARIOIO). Meanings compiled from (Liddell and Scott 1940).
|
Stem |
Cognates |
Meanings |
|
Forward reading |
|
|
|
IKA |
sufficing, becoming, befitting, sufficient, enough, excessive |
|
|
KAR |
kar- (κείρω) English care |
heart (compare cardio-),
with all the heart, heartily destroy, consume, eat greedily, waste, devour head dizziness, vertigo blocking up, intestinal
obstruction heavy sleep, torpor, drowsiness (drinking-bout, intoxication, drunken headache) stun, stupefy, of drunken sleep; plunge into deep sleep or torpor, stun, stupefy kill exceedingly or throughout;
destroy, consume, eat greedily, devour; blocking up, intestinal obstruction safekeeping, supervision,
custody, charge, protection, management, looking after, parenting, concern,
attention, attentiveness, solicitude, sympathy, looking after, to be
concerned, worry (oneself), trouble oneself, bother, mind, concern oneself
with, burden oneself with, etc. |
|
ARI |
strengthening the notion conveyed by its compound |
|
|
OIO |
such as, like, the sort of
person who . . , a thing which, nature, as, just as, |
|
|
Reverse reading |
|
|
|
OIO |
my, your, his, her, one’s, a
man’s own |
|
|
OIR |
straight course or direction |
|
|
IRA |
ἱράομαι (ἱερ-.) |
continuous, running style,
fasten together [stable], connected system, not antithetic or with balanced
periods [vertical (see section Hier)] peace, have naught to fear |
|
RAK |
rents in the face, wrinkles, becoming ragged or wrinkled, of the skin,
when the flesh under it is shrunk [old age], a substance used in alchemy
[elixir] |
|
|
RAKI |
the lower part of the back,
the chine, the trunk (of a dragon) |
|
The OIO ending plays the same semantic role as -like in vertigo-like. Reading IKARIOIO from left to right produces sememes about health trouble due to excessive eating, drinking, or intoxication, with heart and head symptoms of the vertigo type, potentially leading to coma or death and requiring care. Reading the exact string from right to left produces the opposite sememes associated with the correct behavior for stability and peace of mind into old age. Old age is suggested by the wrinkles and the curved ‘dragon’ spine.
The symptoms like intoxication, dizziness and a hangover (King Icarius) married Queen Periboea (PERI-BOIA). Periboea was a naiad because it was related to water; or, rather, it was related to water because it was a naiad. This object does
not need extensive analysis since the cluster BOI has already been discussed (see section Cadmus in Boeotia and Thebes). It is
associated with infancy and baby troubles such as messy feeding, vomiting,
urination, defecation, ear secretions, tooth development, driveling, drooling, etc., all
requiring baby care. The morpheme BOI is an exclamation of disgust, βοῖ (boi; /voi/). A vertigo-like
condition (Icarius) combined with Periboea, i.e., everything producing
the boi exclamation gave birth to all human excretions that
need cleaning. This is Penelope. The myth adds that Icarius and Periboea
reigned in Σπάρτη (Spartē; Doric Σπάρτα; Sparta; SPARTA or
SPARTH). Table 3 scans the two variants of the kingdom of
abdominal trouble, hangover, and disgust to validate or discard these
hypotheses.
Table 3. Semantic scan
of Sparta (SPARTH or SPARTA). Meanings compiled from (Liddell and Scott
1940).
|
Stem |
Cognates |
Meanings |
|
Forward reading |
|
|
|
SPA |
spasm, convulsion, sprain or rupture of muscular fibre |
|
|
SPAR |
fish (bream) |
|
|
PART |
place beside; of meals, set before, serve up, meats set before one,
deposit, venture, stake, hazard |
|
|
ART |
one must take away, one must
clear, one must deny; take away, take up, remove, kill or destroy |
|
|
ARTH |
that by which anything is carried (carrier) |
|
|
ARTA |
fasten to, depend upon |
|
|
Reverse reading |
|
|
|
ATR |
not to be feared |
|
|
HTR |
warp |
|
|
TRA |
stick or fix in, fix in the
earth, plant, fit together, build, build oneself, become solid, stiffen,
establish, be irrevocably fixed |
|
|
TRAP |
tread grapes |
|
|
RAP |
man’s high boot, soldiers’
boots, soldiers themselves, generally, groundwork, foundation, the basement of a
building |
|
|
RAPS (RAΨ) |
recitation of Epic poetry, epic composition [word and text composition (see section Poetry)] |
|
In Table 3, SPARTH and SPARTA
read as shivering disease, skin disorders, and bad health in general
(also mentioning tumors) due to poverty, malnutrition, and food
contamination, i.e., meats that should usually be thrown away. These
conditions are associated with ‘seed’ (spore) born organisms growing on
(SPARTH) or, depending upon (STARTA), carriers. An alternative reading may
associate such unhealthy conditions with pejorative professions, such as
transporters, or with (economic) dependency. But this is less likely since
terms like σπαρτός (spartos), and its cognates imply organisms scattered or sown, grown from seed,
cultivated, e.g., microorganisms, or contaminated vegetables (vectors). In any way, this is yet another example of alleged dialectal variation that turns
out to be a semiotic nuance.
Reading SPARTH/A backward, ATRAPS, or HTRAPS (with the
final Ps giving Psi; Ψ), we have another example of antonymy by inversion (see section On the origin of words). Instead of poverty and associated malnutrition, lousy
health, and disgust, we now encounter sememes of good health and somatic and
mental stability, with particular mention of the abdominal region in the HTRAPS
(SPARTH) version, a solid basis of development until puberty, physical strength
and clear mind, as well as several noble professions – such as military,
clothing, or letters – leading to wealth and a luxurious later life.
References
Beekes, Robert Stephen Paul, and Lucien van. Beek. 2010. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Brill.
Linnaeus, Carl von. 1758. Systema Naturæ. Vol. 1. 10th ed. Stockholm: Holmiæ.
