The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Cappuccino Monks

If expressive espressos have a circuitous etymology, it’s as nothing compared to the frothy delights of the cappuccino.

In 1520, a monk called Matteo Da Bascio decided that his fellow Franciscans were all terrible sybarites who had fallen away from the original calling of St Francis. They did luxurious things like wearing shoes, and Da Bascio decided to start a new order of pure, barefoot Franciscans.

The Old Franciscans were rather hurt by this and tried to suppress Matteo’s unshod breakaways. He was forced to flee into hiding with the sympathetic Camaldolese monks who wore little hoods called, in Italian, cappuccios. Matteo and his brethren wore the cappuccios themselves, just to blend in, but when his breakaway order got official recognition in 1528 they found that they had become so used to the hoods that they decided to keep them on. His followers were therefore nicknamed the Capuchin Monks.

The Capuchin Monks spread quickly all over Catholic Europe, and their hoods had become so familiar that when, a century later, explorers in the New World found apes with a dark brown patch on the top of their heads that looked like a little monkey-hood, they decided to call them Capuchin Monkeys.

What’s particularly beautiful about this name is that, so far as anybody can tell, monkeys are named after monks. You see, most people agreed with Matteo Da Bascio: far from being models of chastity and virtue, medieval monks were all filthy sinners and little better than animals. So what do you call that brown, hairy ape? A monkey.

The habit of the Capuchin Order was, and is, a pretty sort of creamy brown colour. So when the new, frothy, creamy, chocolate-sprinkled form of coffee was invented in the first half of the twentieth century, it was named after their robes: the cappuccino.

Mind you, most baristas wouldn’t understand you if you ordered a little hood. But then again, most baristas don’t realise that they are really barristers.