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ION, Athens, and the flower
by Andy ;—) (guest)
6/27/2006, 12:56 AM
in reply to a message by Pavlos the Greak Freak
Now my specific question is: Has the name of the legendary founder of Athens, ION, got anything to do with the name of the flower, or is this pure coincidence?
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- Pavlos   +3
6/27/2006, 1:18 AM
Ionians are not purple!Actually Ion (the flower) is spelled with an omicron, whereas Ion (the name) with an omega.Turks and some Arabs refer to Greeks as "Yunani", i.e., *Ionians* not*. This has no reference to "purple people" or violets, I would hope.

This message was edited 6/27/2006, 1:19 AM

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- Andy ;—) (guest)   +2
6/27/2006, 1:51 AM
But they do grow in flower beds!True enough! But I just found this in my Greek dictionary:"ionia" (with an omega) for "flower bed of violets". So I don't think the omikron/omega thing is really all that crucial. But haven't been able to find out anything about the origin of the name Ion. I thought maybe your clever books might know …
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- Pavlos   +1
6/29/2006, 2:12 AM
I am really pretty stumped with the origin of Ion and the Ionians (I dont care too much about those bloody Corinthians and Ionians, being Doric myself). Here is a site which presents quite a few (nonconclusive) theories:http://www.indo-european.nl/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=leiden&morpho=0&basename=dataiegreek&first=71
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- Andy ;—) (guest)
6/30/2006, 3:52 AM
The link doesn't seem to work …… so maybe you can give me a short survey on the information?tiaAndy
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