How Do You Connect Falcons to Punxsutawney Phil? Pilgrims, That's How.

In my first post of the year I quoted a sentence that ended “…in the same way that peregrine becomes pilgrim.” Since today is Groundhog Day (and the Super Bowl), there are a lot of peregrine pilgrims in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and the Meadowlands, New Jersey, so it's a good day to revisit those words.

Since the quote intimates that peregrine came first (that's debatable), we’ll deal with that word first. 

Peregrine is an adjective that is used primarily in two ways: to describe something that is not from the area or is from abroad (peregrine tourists), or something that wanders or migrates, which is how the Peregrine Falcon got its name. The word in this use is a noun, a proper noun, but with lower case letters it could be an adjective describing any number of falcons,  including the one made by Ford in the 1960s.

The word peregrine came to English in the 1300s ultimately from the Latin word for coming from abroad, peregrinus. It actually entered Middle English in its noun form, peregrination. Peregrination came through Old French (peregrination) where it meant pilgrimage or long absence. It came to French from the Latin in the 1100s. According to etymonline.com the French word at one time referred to anything coming from outside Roman territory.

So where did pilgrim come from? (I know, the Pilgrims came from Plymouth, England.* I used the lower case, not the upper case P.) In about the year 1200 English started using the word pilegrim, which they got from the Old French word pelerine (doesn’t look alike to me, either) which the French also got from peregrinus. Peregrin could refer to not only to someone on a pilgrimage but also to any stranger, foreigner or crusader. In Italian the word is pelligrino, and in case you enjoy the Italian mineral water San Pelligrino, its name comes from the town where it’s located (San Pellegrino Terme). How they got the name, I don’t know, but it seems people have been coming there for a long time to avail themselves of the curative powers of the water. Leonardo DaVinci is rumored to have done so, but “that may just be a case of attaching a famous name to a quote.” (Abraham Lincoln, or perhaps me...) In case you’re thinking of going, it’s in Lombardy, not too far from Zogno or Castignola.

I can’t let the reference to Punxsutawney pass without recalling our idyllic time living there. The word Punxsutawney comes from the Delaware Indians, and means town of the sandflies, although it may mean town of the mosquitoes. I don’t remember being bothered much by either when we lived there, so I can’t come down on either side of the raging debate. The Delaware people, according to delawarenation.com, are descendants of the Lenape people who inhabited New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Punxsutawney Phil , according to groundhog.com, was named after King Phillip. It doesn’t indicate as much, but I like to think the King Phillip after which he was named was the son of Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoaug Tribe that helped the Pilgrims through the winter of 1620, because with that reference I am able to bring this post full circle. See how it all works? 

*Plymouth not the city from which they sailed - it was named for the stock company that had the contract to settle the area. While there is a Plymouth, England, the Pilgrims actually sailed to America from Southampton, in Hampshire, England, 150 miles east of Plymouth.