pre-incident

Here's a pic taken of some street art just outside of California Kitchen, the burger-and-burrito joint close to Itaewon in neighboring Gyeongnidan, on March 30, not long before I ended up going to the hospital. When I met Charles and Tom, I was tired and out of breath that day, and I was still thinking my symptoms were COVID-related. Little did I know.

The street sign with the number "3" on it advertises this as Hoenamu 26th Street/회나무로26길, so I had to wonder what kind of tree (namu) a hoenamu* was. As often happens with the biological names of Korean life forms, finding a straightforward name for the hoenamu in English wasn't easy. The Naver dictionary called this by a Latin designation, Euonymus sachalinensis. According to Wikipedia (which did me wrong regarding that Korean logo), the common English designation for the tree is the flat-stalked spindle. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. If I learn something, you're going to have to learn along with me.

Euonymus sounds as if it comes from Greek. Many Latin terms come from Greek; the Romans stole a lot. Eu, in Greek, means "good," as in euphony ("good sounds," as opposed to cacophony, "bad sounds"). The nym part of onymus means "name." I figured out that much on my own. Euonymus—probably a Latinized version of the original name (Greek names often end in -os, not -us... think Kerberos, not Cerberus)—turns out to be a figure in Greek mythology, a son of Gaia: he is the "well-named" one (see here). So is a flat-stalked spindle a well-named tree?

__________

*Pronounce it "hweh-nah-moo."