Of Honeymoons and the Brits
Once again, an unexpected topic, I know! It all started with me sipping a coffee a few weeks back and realising that English and French use the same expression: honeymoon and lune de miel.
I will admit that it took me almost twenty years of living in Britain to put that together. Not the smartest puppy in the litter, you could say. Still, my curiosity was tickled!
Today, a honeymoon usually means a holiday taken by newlyweds after their wedding. Don’t give me that look—I know it seems obvious, but was it always so?
The short answer is no, which is a good thing, as otherwise there would be no reason for an article!
My first surprise? The English word is recorded as far back as 1546, in a collection of proverbs by John Heywood. His spectacularly lengthy title begins A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. I shall spare you the rest.
Those sixteenth-century authors were a rather cynical bunch, though. Honeymoon, at that time, described the early sweetness of marriage, when affection, like the moon, reaches its fullness and then begins to wane. Yup, you got one good month of goodie-goodie and then… well, the honeymoon is over, as they say!. That cynical association appears in Richard Huloet’s dictionary of 1552.
And now I am curious about cynicism! I wonder who the first human was to display such an attitude! Sorry, I know, one rabbit hole at a time. Back to the topic at hand.
How did the word make its way into other languages, you may ask? Well, the term was adopted in other languages as a calque (or loan translation), which is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. Yes, I had to look up what that meant. You are welcome to my newly acquired knowledge.
The French expression appears in Voltaire’s Zadig, in the mid-eighteenth century—well before the nineteenth-century fashion for wedding trips. So the romantic expression and the holiday did not spread as one neat package.
Yes, I was lazy and stopped at one language!
Over time, honeymoon also became associated with a holiday. The custom developed in early-nineteenth-century Britain (again!), starting with upper-class couples before spreading more widely across society and to other countries.
The fact that this romantic term and vacation all come from one of the least romantic countries in Europe kind of blows my mind. But… I am not judging. Much!
Now, I don’t know about you, but while this is all interesting information, I am still not clear how the term came about. I understand the link to the moon and sweetness, but did any particular customs lead to this expression? Is it only because the first month is the sweetest? Is it about newlyweds being provided with mead for a month? Is it related to the old custom of marriage by capture (because that doesn’t sound barbaric at all now, does it?!)?
The truth is nobody knows what, if any, local customs might have led to the term being coined, because there is a frustrating lack of written records.
I was hoping for some rather extraordinary history here and some wild and romantic Roman customs. That was a bit of a fail, wasn’t it! A little bit like my article on the word Amen.
That leaves us with only one thing to do, really: keep celebrating the occasion. Whatever its origins, we only live once, after all—so be wild and live a little!
Sources:
