Claude Thomas Alexis Jordan

Claude Thomas Alexis Jordan (29 October 1814, Lyon – 7 February 1897, Lyon) was a French botanist and taxonomist.

Born into a wealthy family, he chose a career path in natural history rather than becoming a businessman like his father. From 1836 to 1877 he traveled widely throughout France, collecting many botanical specimens on trips to the Massif Central, the Alps, the Pyrenees as well as on excursions to locations near Lyon. As a member of the Linnaean Society of Lyon, he came under the influence of several local naturalists, including Marc Antoine Timeroy, an amateur botanist who would have a profound impact upon his career. At Jordan's extensive botanical garden in Lyon, with his assistant Joseph Victor Viviand-Morel, he cultivated many thousands of different varieities of plants.

Known for his micro-morphological analysis of plants — as a taxonomist he proposed a narrow conceptualization for the determination of species. Because of this, he was widely criticized for his tendency to differentiate species too finely. In regards to the 1,685 species that he named, Johannes Paulus Lotsy referred to them as "Jordanianas", while Georges Coutagne called them "Jordanias". In a September 15, 1874 issue of Revue des deux Mondes, Jules Émile Planchon published an article regarding Jordan's narrow division of species, titled "Le morcellement de l'espèce en botanique et le Jordanisme" (The fragmentation of botanical species and "Jordanism").

Jörð

In Norse mythology, Jörð (Icelandic "earth", pronounced [ˈjœrð] and from Old Norse jǫrð, pronounced [ˈjɔrð], sometimes Anglicized as Jord or Jorth; also called Jarð, [jɑrð] as in Old East Norse), is a female jötunn. She is the mother of Thor and the personification of the Earth. Fjörgyn and Hlóðyn are considered to be other names for Jörð. Some scholars refer to Jörð as a goddess. Jörð's name appears in skaldic poetry both as a poetic term for the land and in kennings for Thor.

Etymology

Jörð is the common word for earth in Old Norse, as are the word's descendants in the modern Scandinavian languages; Icelandic jörð, Faroese jørð, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian jord. It is cognate to English "earth" through Old English eorðe.

Attestations

Gylfaginning

In Gylfaginning, the first part of the Prose Edda, Jörð is described as one of Odin's sexual partners and the mother of Thor. She is the daughter of Annar and Nótt and half-sister of Auðr and Dagr.

However, scholar Haukur Thorgeirsson points out that the four manuscripts of Gylfaginning vary in their descriptions of the family relations between Nótt, Jörð, Dagr, and Dellingr. In other words, depending on the manuscript, either Jörð or Nótt is the mother of Dagr and partner of Dellingr. Haukur details that "the oldest manuscript, U, offers a version where Jǫrð is the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr while the other manuscripts, R, W and T, cast Nótt in the role of Dellingr's wife and Dagr's mother", and argues that "the version in U came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT. The results of this accident made their way into the Icelandic poetic tradition".