Naming in Early Modern Science

Chapter 2 presents the relevant linguistic terminology, provides an overview of different forms of names, and addresses the question of which languages the names were based on. Two principal kinds of neologism can be distinguished: form and sense. The former denotes the coinage of new words and the latter the process of giving existing words a new meaning. In practice, they were not as distinct as they appeared, since most new words were coined from well-known roots and according to long-established rules. Although the texts that form the corpus of the monograph were predominantly written in Latin, many names were also taken from Greek, some from Arabic and Hebrew, and others from vernacular languages. The last part of Chapter 2 discusses processes of naming using four examples: Technica, Musa, the names of the moons of Jupiter, and Atlas. The case studies have been arranged according to their ever-increasing contingency, beginning with a term that had been chosen on purpose and ending with a term that was never meant to assume its present connotation.