An Orchid by another name?

When you hear the word Orchid, what picture does in conjure up in your imagination?

Does it conjure up visions of beauty, mystery, intrigue, wealth, exotic scenery or other fascinating possibilities, apart from difficult to get to flower again?

If you had have asked me what I thought of when I heard the word Orchid before watching a repeat of a “Midsummer’s Murder Mystery” recently, I would have answered somewhere along the above lines. But not any more! Now I can’t get the word “Testicles” out of my ‘mental picture” when I hear the word orchid.

According to this font of knowledge and wisdom on all things Orchids, it appears that the Greek* word for Orchids means Testicles, because that is what the Orchid tubers, (bulbish section) looked like to the original discoverers/namers.

So now, when I think of Orchids, I have another picture in my mind. But is that right? Just because I now know that something had its beginnings in some form that many may find, even mildly, off-putting, offensive or degrading, does that really lesson the quality or beauty of the object in hand. After all, a famous poet once said, “A Rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” **

So I believe, that what holds true for a rose should also hold true for an orchid and even for people and other things too, don’t you? Yet how often are we guilty of looking down on people or things of dubious backgrounds, without seeing their current beauty or wealth or wisdom?

Again what about you? Is their something or someone today, that you should be re-evaluating, based on their current worth and not their ancient and remote past, or “name history? “ Over to you.

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*[I checked online with American Heritage Dictionary and they say this: “from Greek orkhis, testicle, orchid (from the shape of its tubers).]
** I looked it up also, and it was Shakespeare and apparently what he really said was, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” From Romeo and Juliet. Act Two, Scene Two.