Taxonomy and Naming
The word yew is from Proto-Germanic *īwa-, possibly originally a loanword from Gaulish *ivos, compare Irish ēo, Welsh ywen, French if (see Eihwaz for a discussion). Baccata is Latin for bearing red berries. The word yew as it was originally used seems to refer to the color brown. The yew (μίλος) was known to Theophrastus, who noted its preference for mountain coolness and shade, its evergreen character and its slow growth.
Most romance languages kept a version of the Latin word taxus (Italian tasso, Corsican tassu, Occitan teis, Catalan teix, Gasconic tech, Spanish tejo, Portuguese teixo, Galician teixu and Romanian tisă) from the same root as toxic. In Slavic languages, the same root (presumably borrowed from Romanian) is preserved: Russian tiss (тис), Slovenian tisa, Serbian tisa (тиса).
The common yew was one of the many species first described by Linnaeus. Along with around 30 other species, it is classified in the family Taxaceae, which is now firmly classified as a conifer in the order Pinales.
Read more about this topic: Taxus Baccata
Famous quotes containing the word naming:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)