belemnite

Note: The Latin name belemnites appears to originate with the German mineralogical pioneer Georg Agricola (1494-1555); it is used a number of times in his De natura fossilium (first printed by Frobenius, Basel, 1546), though he nowhere takes credit for it. The most he says about the word is the following: "At belemnites sagittae effigiem repraesentat: quare Saxones eum uocabulo ex ephialte & sagitta composito nominant … " - "But a belemnite shows the image of an arrow: wherefore the Saxons [= Germans] designate it with a word composed of 'nightmare' and 'arrow'" (p. 266). Conrad Gesner expands upon this statement in his De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum (Zürich, 1565), partially quoting Agricola: "Belemnites Sagittae (quae βέλεμνον Graecis dicitur) effigiem repraesentat. quare Saxones eum vocabulo ex ephialte & sagitta composito (Alpfesscht/Alpschosz) nominant … Belemnites, vel Dactylus Idaeus, maior: sic dictus à figura sagittae: unde & Germani quidam Alpschosz, hoc est, sagittam Incubi appellant." - "A belemnite shows the image of an arrow (which is called bélemnon by the Greeks), wherefore the Saxons designate it with a word composed of 'nightmare' and 'arrow' (Alpfesscht/Alpschosz) … Belemnite, or Idaean finger [finger of Mt. Ida], is greater; so called from the figure of an arrow; from which the Germans call it an Alpschosz, that is, the arrow of an incubus" (pp. 90, 92). Gesner's comments suggest that the coinage belemnites might have been suggested by Alpschosz (literally, "elf-shot," though Agricola and Gessner give the word the customary post-pagan interpretation, rendering Alb as "incubus" or "nightmare"). — Though Greek bele- would appear to go back to *g^welh₁-, the full-grade base of bállō, bállein (from *g^wəl-n-ō or *g^wəl-i̯-ō), the suffix -mn- has raised questions. Chantraine (La formation des noms en grec ancien, Klincksieck, 1933/1979), remarks that bélemnon "est un élargissement inattendu de bélos" ("is an unexpected extension of bélos" ["missile, arrow"]) and belongs, along with several other words with the same suffix, to "vocabulaire populaire et technique" (p. 215). Edzard Furnée, Die wichtigsten konsonantischen Erscheinungen des Vorgriechischen (Mouton, 1972), p. 151 (cited in Beekes, Etymological Dictonary of Greek), regards the suffix and the word as substratal.