George Frederick Herbert Smith

NOMENCLATURE OF PRECIOUS STONES

THE names in popular use for the principal gem-stones may be traced back to very early times, and, since they were applied long before the determinative study of minerals had become a science, their significance has varied at different dates, and is even now far from precise. No ambiguity or confusion could arise if jewellers made use of the scientific names for the species, but most of them are unknown or at least unfamiliar to those unversed in mineralogy, and to banish old-established names is undesirable, even if the task were not hopeless. The name selected for a gem-stone may have a very important bearing on its fortunes. When the love-sick Juliet queried ‘What’s in a name?’ her mind was wandering far from jewels; for them a name is everything. The beautiful red stones that accompany the diamond in South Africa were almost a drug in the market under their proper title—garnet, but command a ready sale under the misnomer ‘Cape-ruby.’ To many minds there is a subtle satisfaction in the possession of a stone which is assumed to be a sort of ruby that would be destroyed by the knowledge that the stone really belonged to the cinderella species of gem-stones—the despised garnet. For similar reasons it was deemed advisable to offer the lustrous green garnet found some thirty and odd years ago in the Ural Mountains as ‘olivine,’ not a happy choice since their colour is grass- rather than olive-green, apart from the fact that the term is in general use in science for the species known in jewellery as peridot.

The names employed in jewellery are largely based upon the colour, the least reliable from a determinative point of view of all the physical characters of gem-stones. Qualifying terms are employed to distinguish stones of obviously different hardness. ‘Oriental’ distinguishes varieties of corundum, but does not imply that they necessarily came from the East; the finest gem-stones originally reached Europe by that road, and the hardest coloured stones consequently received that term of distinction.

Nearly all red stones are grouped under the name ruby, which is derived from a Latin word, ruber, meaning red, or under other names adapted from it, such as rubellite, rubicelle. It is properly applied to red corundum; ‘balas’ ruby is spinel, which is associated with the true ruby at the Burma mines and is similar in appearance to it when cut, and ‘Cape’ ruby, is, as has been stated above, a garnet from South Africa. Rubellite is the lovely rose-pink tourmaline, fine examples of which have recently been discovered in California, and rubicelle is a less pronouncedly red spinel. Sapphire is by far the oldest and one of the most interesting of the words used in the language of jewels. It occurs in Hebrew and Persian, ancient tongues, and means blue. It was apparently employed for lapis lazuli or similar substance, but was transferred to the blue corundum upon the discovery of this splendid stone. Oblivious of the real meaning of the word, jewellers apply it in a quasi-generic sense to all the varieties of corundum with the exception of the red ruby, and give vent to such incongruous expressions as ‘white sapphire,’ ‘yellow sapphire’; it is true such stones often contain traces of blue colour, but that is not the reason of the terms. ‘Brazilian’ sapphire is blue tourmaline, a somewhat rare tint for this species. The curious history of the word topaz will be found below in the chapter dealing with the species of that name. It has always denoted a yellow stone, and at the present day is applied by jewellers indiscriminately to the true topaz and citrine, the yellow quartz, the former, however, being sometimes distinguished by the prefix ‘Brazilian.’ ‘Oriental’ topaz is corundum, and ‘occidental’ topaz is a term occasionally employed for the yellow quartz. Emerald, which means green, was first used for chrysocolla, an opaque greenish stone (p. 288), but was afterwards applied to the priceless green variety of beryl, for which it is still retained. ‘Oriental’ emerald is corundum, ‘Brazilian’ emerald in the eighteenth century was a common term for the green tourmaline recently introduced to Europe, and ‘Uralian’ emerald has been tentatively suggested for the green garnet more usually known as ‘olivine.’ Amethyst is properly the violet quartz, but with the prefix ‘oriental’ it is also applied to violet corundum, though some jewellers use it for the brilliant quartz, with purple and white sectors, from Siberia. Almandine, which is derived from the name of an Eastern mart for precious stones, has come to signify a stone of columbine-red hue, principally garnet, but with suitable qualification corundum and spinel also.

The nomenclature of jewellery tends to suggest relations between the gem-stones for which there is no real foundation, and to obscure the essential identity, except from the point of view of colour, of sapphire and ruby, emerald and aquamarine, cairngorm and amethyst.