What's In A Name: Eugene, Jasmine

Eugene-This male name is from transliterated Greek "Eugenios," pretty much literally "good stock," but often translated as "well born."  This was taken by Latin as "Eugenius," and passed into French as "Eugène." behindthename.com says the name was not very common in western Europe until the time of Prinz Eugene of Savoy, who became well known in the latter part of the 1600s and the earlier 1700s. He was a military commander for the Old German Empire (Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) and for the Habsburg monarchy, although he had been born in Paris when Louis XIV was King of France. He was of French and Italian descent. He is a pretty famous person in German/Austrian history. "Apparently" the name made its way into English via Latin, French, and perhaps, German (?). The name in German is Eugen and is Eugenio in Italian. The female form in English is Eugenia and in French it is Eugénie, a name that became well known in the mid 1800s as it was the name of Napoleon III's wife (he was Napoleon's nephew and Emperor of France).  

 

Jasmine-This name is from the plant/flower (from the "olive" family), which has long been used to make perfume. It goes back to transliterated Persian* "yas(a)min," the name for the plant/flower, but where the word comes from is unknown. Arabic borrowed the word from Persian as transliterated "yasamin," and Old French borrowed the word originally as "jessemin," which then became "jasmin," and English borrowed the word in the 1570s. In spite of this information, exactly where English got the female given name usage is unclear, although the name has become rather popular in English and quite a number of other languages, including forms in Persian, Arabic, French. Certainly the use of plants and flowers for given names is quite common (think "Rose," Holly," "Lily" and "Daisy," and there are more). The name is sometimes spelled with a "Y" in place of the "J" in some languages (for instance, sometimes in Spanish as "Yasmin") and the name sometimes is spelled without the ending "e" in English.

I consulted the following for preparation of this article: 1) "A Greek-English Lexicon," by Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Roderick McKenzie, and Eric Arthur Barber, published by Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1940  2) "A World of Baby Names" by Teresa Norman, published by Perigee/Penguin Group, New York, 2003 3) behindthename.com

* Persian is an Indo European language making it a relative of English, although further down the family tree. 

WORD HISTORY:

Cosmos-I'm going to say the ultimate origin of "cosmos" is unknown, although there have been some Indo European forms proposed, but there is no general consensus about any one form. "Cosmos" and "cosmetic" are close relatives. What is known about "cosmos" is that it goes back to transliterated Ancient Greek "kósmos," which meant, "order, arrangement;" thus also, "the universe" (seen as an arrangement or order); thus also, "decoration" (something added to give order to someone or something with the intent of improving its appearance). The famous Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras used "kósmos" as his word for the heavenly bodies and the universe. German scientist and thinker Alexander von Humboldt (he was from Berlin) used the Greek word used by Pythagoras and applied it to (then) modern times for his work "Kosmos," a multi-volume work published in the mid 1800s. English seems to have simply anglicized the word as "cosmos." English had taken the word in the 1100s (from Greek texts?), but it was very rarely used, "seemingly" even among academics. Humboldt's work appears to have been the catalyst for a re-borrowing, or a revival, of the word.