The white album

Candida albicans, the organism that causes thrush, rather oversells itself by deriving its name from two words that both mean “white.”

The Latin candidus referred to a bright, almost glistening white. It is the origin of such luminous words as incandescent and candle. Some etymologists also make a link to the word incendiary, tracing it to the Latin incandere, “to cause to glow.” This burning link can be extended to incense, used either as a verb (when tempers are ignited) or as a noun (when an aromatic resin is burned in a censer).

The association of whiteness with purity and simplicity gives us the word candid. A Roman citizen seeking election to the post of magistrate would exploit this mental connection by presenting himself to the public in a gleaming white toga. Candidatus was the Latin term for such a person, and our word candidate recalls this early effort at subliminal advertising.

Albus was a rather chalkier white. It gives us albino and albumen, and the white priestly tunic called an alb. In the early days of paper production, the noticeable whiteness of the pages of official record books earned them the name albums. Then, in the 17th century, there was a brief but tedious vogue for the album amicorum, a booklet in which friends were invited to inscribe their names. Our current usage, indicating an empty book in which items are collected, comes to us directly from these early, unambitious autograph hunters.

The next white word is derived from a rather recondite Latin pun. The story starts with the Portuguese word for pelican: alcatraz (from al qadus, Arabic for “the bucket,” referring to the pelican’s capacious throat pouch).

In 1775, when Lieutenant Juan de Ayala landed on a rocky island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, he found so many nesting pelicans there that he named the island Alcatraz in their honour. In the same waters, frigate birds were often seen—big, dark, predatory relatives of the pelican, who also sported pouches below their beaks, and were indiscriminately dubbed alcatraz, too. And, at about the same time, ships rounding Cape Horn were being followed by huge white birds—wandering relatives of the petrel, with enormous wingspans. Some unknown naturalist decided that if a black frigate bird was an alcatraz he would call the white bird behind his ship an albatraz. And so the albatross got its name. (If this seems far fetched remember that words like motorcade and workaholic derive from exactly the same sort of word play.)

Finally, we know that the ancient Greeks referred to southern Britain as Albion, probably in honour of the white cliffs of Dover. The name is still applied, in a poetic way, to England—Byron refers to Albion’s plain. The Latin equivalent, Alba, came to be an ancient name for Scotland, by a devious route that is not entirely clear. It was probably adopted by the Irish, who conflated it with the Gaelic word alp, meaning mountain, and then reapplied it (more appropriately, in their eyes) to the rugged terrain of Scotland. Later, the Irish colonised Scotland at Dalriada, and subsequently took over the entire country. Thus a foreign name, twice or thrice removed, is now venerated as the essence of all that is Scottish. The next time you see a proud Scottish Nationalist displaying an “Alba” bumper sticker, you may care to point this out. Then again, you may not.