Today I believe we’ll look at the
etymology of some woodwinds.
Flute
Flute showed up in the early fourteenth century from the Old French flaut/flaute, which is from the Old Provençal flaut, but before that is unknown. It might be from the classical Latin flare, which means blowing, mixed with the Provençal laut, which means lute. Imagine it being a mix of flare and laut. There’s no indication that’s what it is, but what if???
Flute showed up in the early fourteenth century from the Old French flaut/flaute, which is from the Old Provençal flaut, but before that is unknown. It might be from the classical Latin flare, which means blowing, mixed with the Provençal laut, which means lute. Imagine it being a mix of flare and laut. There’s no indication that’s what it is, but what if???
This one’s actually kind of easy. It showed up in 1768 from the French clarinette, which is from clair, which means clear and is from the classical Latin clarus, also clear. I guess it was called a clarinet because the sound was clear.
A sax is probably the most modern instrument here, the word showing up in 1851 from the French saxophone, where it was named for the Belgian who first made it in 1840—Antoine Joseph Sax. Fun fact, he also created an instrument called the saxhorn. Apparently he just liked naming them after himself.
This one showed up in 1724 from the Italian oboe, which is actually from the French hautbois… which was pronounced something like oboe. That word is actually related to the English (!) hautboy, another name for oboe, a mix of haught (high) and bois, which means wood. An oboe is a high wood. And its name has been translated between English and French a bunch of times.
Piccolo showed up in 1830, while piccolo flute showed up in 1809. It’s from the French piccolo and Italian flauto piccolo, which literally translates to small flute. Well, this one was straightforward.
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Yeah, I knew saxophone was named after the guy who invented it. Thanks for the oboe derivation. I kind of knew hautbois from somewhere. (And that explains why the longer version is called an English horn.)
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