WotD: mistletoe

1. die Mistel
2. de mistel, de maretak
3. el muérdago, la liga
4. el vesc
5. le gui
6. an drualus
7. yr uchelwydd
8. jemioła
9. 겨우살이, 기생목 (寄生木)
10. 槲寄生 hújìshēng
11. 宿木 (やどりぎ)

Notes: Every chapter of Genji has a brief title, often the name of a plant or other natural element prominently mentioned within it. Yadorigi (宿木) is the title of Chapter 49, and although Waley translates this as "Mistletoe", Seidensticker prefers "Ivy", arguing that the poem in which the word appears suggests a twining plant. Literally, the first element (yadori) is "lodging" and ki simply means "tree", so it could arguably refer to anything which grows upon a tree.

Before reading this, it had never occurred to me that mistletoe grew in East Asia. Not because it wouldn't (though despite the similarities in climate obviously not every Old World species is found on both ends of Eurasia) but because I don't recall ever seeing mention of it before in any East Asian source I've read, fiction or nonfiction, whereas it's ubiquitous in European folklore and tradition. The pure Korean name, incidentally, translates as "winter living" whereas the Sino-Korean is "parasite tree" and shares two out of three characters with the Standard Chinese "daimyo oak [Q. dentata] parasite".

I also didn't realise that the most common American variety, Phoradendron leucarpum (bizarrely known commonly both as "Eastern mistletoe" and "Western mistletoe"), is a different species from its European counterpart, Viscum album. That doesn't surprise me, however. What does surprise me is that it's a different genus as well. The Latin name is, obviously, the source of Catalan vesc and--not so obviously--French gui (with irregular phonetic change supposedly influenced by Frankish).

Spanish is clearly off on its own with muérdago. Liga is derived from Latin ligō and is metonymic, possessing as well the meaning "birdlime". (Birdlime could be made from the sap of the mistletoe.) That's also the etymological meaning of Germanic element mistel found in the Dutch, German, and Scandinavian terms as well as the English. (The second element derives from OE tán "twig"; cf. Old Norse mistilteinn.) The Modern Irish is the self-explanatory "oak-herb" and the Welsh represents "high-tree".