Home Gudgeon and gist Language Log "Sound" at the center, "horn" at the periphery: the shawm and its eastern cousins, part 2

"Sound" at the center, "horn" at the periphery: the shawm and its eastern cousins, part 2

Language Log 2022-08-19

For a good example of how music and musical instruments, together with the words to designate them, could travel long distances in antiquity, we have already taken a look at the case of the shawm:  "The shawm and its eastern cousins" (11/16/15).  Since writing that post nearly seven years ago, a few more interesting facts about the shawm family have come to light, so it's time to revisit this raucous instrument.

I first encountered this melodic noisemaker in the guise of the Chinese suǒnà 嗩吶.  Inasmuch as the Sinographic form has two mouth radicals, that could be to emphasize that it has to do with making sounds, which is definitely true, but that might also indicate that it is a transcription of a foreign word, which is certainly the case.  The latter is underscored by the fact that it has the variant orthographic form with a metal radical on the first character:  鎖吶.

So where did the suona come from, and how did it get to China?  By investigating suona's linguistic ancestry, we can get a pretty good idea of the route by which it came to the Middle Kingdom.

Wiktionary says that Sinitic suona was borrowed from Persian sornâ سورنا‎.

And whence cometh Persian sornâ سورنا‎?

Borrowed from an unknown Indo-European cognate of Luwian (zurni, “horn”), Sanskrit शृङ्ग (ṡṛṅga, “horn”), Latin cornū, English horn, probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (though Kloekhorst disagrees). Folk etymology explains the word as سور‎ (sur, “banquet, feast”) + نای‎ (nây, “pipe, flute, nay”)

Descendants:

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There is our Sinitic suona at the bottom of the list.

Ultimately, these words are related to English "horn":

Old English horn "horn of an animal; projection, pinnacle," also "wind instrument" (originally one made from animal horns), from Proto-Germanic *hurni- (source also of German Horn, Dutch horen, Old Frisian horn, Gothic haurn), from PIE root *ker- (1) "horn; head."

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Now, back to tracing the roots of "shawm":

In English the name first appears in the 14th century. There were originally three main variant forms, (1) schallemele (shamulle or shamble), (2) s(c)halmys (shalemeyes or chalemyes, all plural forms in Middle English), and (3) sc(h)almuse (or schalmesse), each derived from a corresponding variant in Old French: chalemel, chalemie, and chalemeaux (the plural of chalemel), each in turn derived from the Latin calamus ('reed'), or its Vulgar Latin diminutive form, calamellus. (The name of a somewhat different reed instrument, the chalumeau, also shares this etymology.) The early plural forms were often mistaken for a singular, and new plurals were formed from them. The later reduction in the 15th and 16th centuries to a single syllable in forms such as schalme, shaume, shawme, and finally (in the 16th century) shawm, was probably due to this confusion of plural and singular forms.

In German the shawm is called Schalmei (or for the larger members of the family Bombard—also in English in the 14th century—later corrupted to Bombhardt and finally in the 17th century to Pommer).This is borne out by the very similar names of many folk shawms used as traditional instruments in various European nations: in Spain, many traditional shawms with different names can be found, such as the Castilian, Aragonese, and Leonese dulzaina (sometimes called chirimía, a term that derives from the same Old French word as shawm); the Valencian and Catalan shawms (xirimia, dolçaina, or gralla) or the Navarrese gaita.[what language is this?] In Portugal there is an instrument called charamela; and the name of the Italian shawm is ciaramella (or: cialamello, cennamella).

However, it is also possible that the name comes from the Arabic salamiya (سلامية‎), a traditional oboe from Egypt, as the European shawm seems to have been developed from similar instruments brought to Europe from the Near East during the time of the Crusades. This Arabic name is itself linguistically related to many other Eastern names for the instrument: the Arabic zamr, the Turkish zūrnā, the Persian surnāy, the Chinese suona, the Javanese saruni, and the Hindu sahanai or sanayi.

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Stephen Jones has a virtuoso article on “Shawms around the world” (8/20/21).  He also has a book concentrating on shawms in North China:

Jones, Stephen (2007). Ritual and Music of North China: Shawm Bands in Shanxi Province. SOAS Musicology Series. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing.

Now, I have to confess that the real reason for my writing this particular post at this particular time is that I used the word "sonata" in a long book review I'm writing as a metaphor for the quality of the book.  As soon as I saw the word "sonata" written down on the page, it made me think of "suona", I stopped writing the book review and turned to this post.

Sonata (/səˈnɑːtə/; Italian: [soˈnaːta], pl. sonate; from Latin and Italian: sonare [archaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by suonare], "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian cantare, "to sing"), a piece sung.

(source)

From Italian sonata, from the feminine past participle of sonare (modern suonare), from Latin sonāre (“to make sound”).

(source)

[Italian, from feminine past participle of sonare, to sound, from Latin sonāre; see swen- in Indo-European roots.]

swen-

To sound.

(oldest form *swenh2–).
1. Suffixed o-grade form *swon-o-.
a. swan1 from Old English swan, swan, from Germanic *swanaz, *swanōn-, "singer";
b. sone, sonic, sonnet, sound1; unison from Latin sonus, a sound.
2. Basic variant form *swenə-. sonant, sonata, sonorous; assonance, consonant, dissonant, resound from Latin sonāre, to sound.

[Pokorny su̯en- 1046.]

(American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition)

*swen-

also swenə-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to sound." 

It forms all or part of: assonance; consonant; dissonant; resound; sonant; sonata; sone; sonic; sonnet; sonogram; sonorous; sound (n.1) "noise, what is heard;" sound (v.1) "to be audible;" swan; unison.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit svanati "it sounds," svanah "sound, tone;" Latin sonus "sound, a noise," sonare "to sound;" Old Irish senim "the playing of an instrument;" Old English geswin "music, song," swinsian "to sing;" Old Norse svanr, Old English swan "swan," properly "the sounding bird."

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Thus I was misled by the superficial resemblance between "sonata" and "suona".  The two are completely unrelated.  Nonetheless, it has been a productive exercise, and I have learned a lot about the relationship between sound and sound-maker.

Having completed this post on sonata and suona, it is time for me to go back to the book review, which is about information science.  This has been a most pleasant divertissement.

 

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