volcano

/vol-KAY-no/ noun. The center of a subterranean eruption, usually, but not always, of molten rock, that is often, but not always, basically conical in shape.

Vulcanology typically refers to the study of volcanoes and other volcanic phenomena, but today we’re going to delve into the other, slightly less sciency, volcanology: volcano etymology.

We owe the English word volcano to the Italian vulcano (V-U-L) (burning mountain) which was derived from the Latin Vulcanus, named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and skills associated with fire, such as metalworking. You don’t hear vulcano-with-a-u in English but the form still occurs in other words such as the aforementioned vulcanology and vulcanic, as in Martin Amis’s description of the set of Brian DePalma’s film Body Double:

Gaunt ladies lurk near the catering caravan. Fat minders or shifters or teamsters called Buck and Flip and Heck move stoically about. The place is big and dark and hot, swathed in black drapes, vulcanic, loud with vile engines, horrid buzzers, expert noise-makers. Nearly all the time absolutely nothing is happening.

Anyway, before the Romans appropriated and renamed the Greek gods to supplement their anemic pantheon (or whatever they called their highest strata of gods before they took that word too), Vulcan was Hephaestus, the Greek god not only of fire, metalworking and blacksmiths, but also of stone masonry, sculpture, carpentry and all kinds of artisanry. The story of tricksy Hephaestus, AKA “the shrewd and crafty one”—who made the greatest gear of the gods, including Achilles’ armor, Hermes’ helmet, Eros’ bow and arrow and Aphrodite’s girdle—but who was also known as “the lame one” and cast down from Olympus before cleverly forcing his way back—is one of the best in Ancient Greek mythology (I highly recommend Stephen Fry’s retelling in his book Mythos).

Thus vulcan was used by the Romans as the name for the Italian stratovolcano called Mount Etna today, which they believed was Vulcan’s forge, its eruptions said to be signs of the great god’s anger whenever he learned of his serially unfaithful wife Venus (AKA Aphrodite’s) latest dalliance. In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Demetrius observes that:

Though Bassianus be the emperor’s brother.
Better than he have worn Vulcan’s badge.

Where wearing “Vulcan’s Badge”—an allusion to Venus’s longstanding affair with Mars—is to be a cuckold.

Nowadays volcano is used generally to refer to the center of a subterranean eruption, usually, but not always, of molten rock, that is often, but not always, basically conical in shape (think the tunnel volcano on The Flintstones).

In fact, volcanos come in a variety of shapes ranging from cones large and small to domes, peaks and shields such as the massive Mauna Loa lava shield that rises nearly 30,000 feet from the ocean floor to form part of Hawaii’s Big Island.

The matter that emerges from volcanoes can also vary. Most often a toxic mixture of lava, ash, and gases, there are also mud volcanoes and, elsewhere in the solar system—such as on moons of Jupiter, Neptune and Saturn—ice volcanoes, or cryovolcanoes.

Vulcan has found his way into the contemporary world in more ways, too, some more lasting than others. In the mid–1800s, mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, who had dramatically predicted the existence and position of Neptune using only math and observations of the planet Uranus, didn’t fare so well when he posited the existence of a planet between Mercury and the Sun that he named Vulcan and that turned out to exist only in his calculations.

Ironically, that other imaginary planet Vulcan, home world of Star Trek’s mind-melding Spock, appears to be an indelible cultural reference despite not only being fictional but, in at least one Trekkian timeline, having been destroyed by the perhaps-too-pointedly named Commander Nero.

And from space overhead to where the rubber meets the road, literally, we have vulcanized rubber, or rubber which has been treated by heat (thus the name) and chemicals to be more durable. Discovered accidentally by chemist Charles Goodyear, vulcanization increases rubber’s resilience and resistance to damage, and is found today in everything from tires, hoses and the soles of shoes to—in a form sometimes called ebonite or vulcanite—fountain pens, saxophone mouthpieces, bowling balls and hockey pucks.

Like many evocative technical terms, vulcanization has taken on a figurative sense as well. Michael Chabon, in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, writes:

The former partisans, the resisters, Communist gunmen, left-Zionist saboteurs the rabble, as they were styled in the newspapers of the south who showed up in Sitka after the war with their vulcanized souls and fought with Polar Bears like Hertz Shemets…

From a variety of volcanoes to the home of our pointy-eared cousins, and from commercial treatments to an alternate history mystery set in a Jewish settlement in Sitka, Alaska, the linguistic legacy of the lame, but clever Greek god Vulcan is as powerful as he was.