Etymology: Old English cammoc , generally assumed to be from Celtic, and to be the same word as cammock n.², with a reference to ‘crooked stems or roots’; but the plant is not so named in any Celtic language, and the root is not specially crooked, so that the actual origin remains doubtful.

Etymology: Middle English kambok , apparently immediately < cambuca, a late Latin word (Du Cange cites Papias cambuta , sustentamen vel baculus, flexus, pedum, crocia, and Gloss. Corbeiense, cambuta , baculus episcoporum), apparently of Gaulish origin, derived < cambo- , crooked, cam adj.; represented in modern Welsh by camawg, camog feminine ‘piece of bent wood, the felloe of a wheel’. Compare also Gaelic camag ‘curl, ringlet, crook,’ and Manx camag ‘crutch, crooked bat or shinty to play hurles, also the game itself’. But some of the senses of the Manx word may be from English; for the Irish and Gaelic for a bent stick for hurling, shinty, hockey, a golf-club, is camán, caman.