How to Handle a Woman

"Malva" is not a particularly common name, and yet I have known two women called that. Pretty, isn't it? I hadn't ever thought about what it might mean until I saw on a container of some European skin product yesterday the following three words in English, French, and Spanish respectively: mallow/mauve/malva. And there's that light bulb! We start with the Latin "malva" (which it still is in Spanish and also Italian), which came into French as "malve" (where it remains in German), where it eventually evolved into "mauve", for the colour of the flowers of the mallow plant, and got softened into Middle English as "malwe" and then "mallowe".

(Parenthetically I will note that a great many people--try Googling the term and see how appallingly many hits you get--think there is a candy called a "marshmellow". There isn't, of course; the correct word is "marshmallow", because the roots of mallow which grows in a marsh--"marrysh mallowe"--were used to make the confection and also in medicines. "Mallow" and "mellow" have no etymological connection at all. I'd have thought "mellow" was somehow related to Latin "mel", "honey", as in "mellifluous", but the OED says it's actually related to "meal", as in ground grain. I suppose they'd know.)

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Another light bulb: A few days ago I stumbled across the Spanish word "agata", meaning agate-stone, and I thought, "Hey! Doesn't that look like 'Agatha'?" And so it is. The root of both is the Greek "agathe", "good". I am, however, unsure about what makes agate so good.

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I was looking for a way to tie all this up and I swear I just now realized this, right this second: Agatha Christie's second husband's last name was Mallowan. Related to "mallow"? Don't know, but it's close enough for me.

(Postscript: it's 9:20 p.m. local time and I just stumbled on a BoingBoing post about--guess what?--marshmallows! Some kind of weird synchonicity is going on here. Or it's just an interesting coincidence. It's all good.)