On the Etymology of Tarot
The word Tarot comes to the English language by way of the French who themselves had borrowed it from the Italian tarroch (plural: tarrochi). Possibly the oldest use of this word to mean a pack of cards comes from 1502 where we find reference to a new game in Brescia called ‘taracho’.1 In 1505, we find a more solid reference from a ledger in Ferrara recording the purchase of packs of playing specifically called “tarochi”. Later that same year we find mention of “Taraux” cards being produced in Avignon.2
Tarot was known originally by the name Trionfi or the Ludus Triumphorum, the game of triumphs hence why the cards are called trumps. This was a reference to the triumphal procession, an ancient Roman custom that Renaissance rulers had revived. Through the works of Petrarch and others the triumphs had become a popular motif appearing on frescos, wedding casks and of course – playing cards.3 These illustrations of increasingly greater allegorical concepts triumphing over even the permanence of death resonated strongly with the deterministic medieval ethos of the generations in living memory of the black plague.
By the early 16th century, a variety of other card games had come about that also used the mechanic of a trump, or chosen suit, which had priority over other cards. First attested as early as 1482, a game known as ‘Triomphe’, the French word for Triumph, also used the trump mechanic to assign a chosen suit to any of the 4 suits of the common 52 card deck. Triomphe is thought to have became so popular that it displaced Trionfi and ursurped the name. After the first decade of the XV century the game formerly known as Trionfi is only ever referred to as Tarrochi. This newer, leaner game of triumphs would then go on to inspire many other games such as Ombre and Whist. Thus Tarot by the way of Whist, is the ancestor of the modern Bridge game.4 But where did this strange word, tarot or more properly tarrochi, come from before this time?
One theory is that tarot derives from the Taro river, a tributary of the Po that runs through modern day Emilia-Romagna near the city of Parma. This theory was first proposed by Sylvia Mann in her book in 1966 and has been repeated in numerous books on tarot including Stewart Kaplan’s First Encyclopedia.5 During the Renaissance this valley was along the trade routes heading West out of Italy and even today there are major highways through that area heading up from Tuscany.
Case in point, on July 6, 1495, there was a major battle fought near Fornovo di Taro where an army made up of forces from various Italian states attempted to stop the invading French Army from retreating back across the Taro River. The battle ended in the French escaping with most of their forces but not without losing the majority of the plunder from their campaign.6
As evidenced by the 1505 references mentioned earlier, Tarot has been Taraux for nearly as long as it has been Tarocchi. It is now generally accepted that the earliest tarot cards came out of Florence and with the Taro Valley being positioned nicely in between Florence and all of the other early centers of tarot’s development as well as along a major trade route to France this theory seems more viable. Was there perhaps some long forgotten tavern keeper that first called the game Tarocchi and has since been lost to history? I feel like if the word Tarot truly did derive from the Taro Valley then we would find more references to it, at least some reference to it, but that is the problem with this entire question.
A common etymology that has been proposed for tarot is that it is derived from the Arabic Taraha meaning ‘to reject or put aside’.7 There are also various other proposals for similar sounding Arabic words. While there have been some hold overs from the Mamluk and Saracen game such as the German pack having an Over and Under Marshal, the Italian and Spanish suit signs being what they are, and the Spanish still using the word Naipe to mean playing card, with the name change to Tarot happening over a century after the playing card’s arrival in Europe I feel like an Arabic root is unlikely.
It was perhaps first suggested in 1526 by Francesco Berni that tarot was synonymous for fool when he wrote in his Capitolo della Primiera that “Tarraco means nothing other than a fool, a simpleton, a plaything.” In the same work he would also refer to Trionfi as a distinct game played with the regular pack. 8 Tarot meaning fool or foolishness is also in keeping with other early card games that tend to have self denigrating names. The name Minchiate is thought to have come from a Latin expression for male genitalia while Karnöffel is thought to have meant a specifically painful hernia in Medieval parlance. In all of these cases these names tend to showcase the general attitude at the time that playing cards was simply not a constructive activity.
An unusual mashup of the fool and mountebank, from the Rosenwald Sheet
(National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)
Other authors throughout the 16th century would use a similar device, speaking candidly in his 1565 work Discourse on the Significance of the Tarot Figures Francesco Piscina stated he was afraid that it may be said ‘a taracho has tarotly spoken of tarot.’ 9 By the end of the century, John Florio defined Tarocco as ‘foolish, gullish, wayward, froward, peevish’ in his Most Copious of Dictionaries.10 However to truly best answer this question we need to find references from before the XV century when the tarot name change began to occur.
There is this word from Ancient Greek: Ταραχή that’s pronounced exactly like tarrochi and was defined in Giovanni Castoni’s Aldine Venice Lexicon Graeco-Latinum from 1497 to mean Perturbatio, or to disturb.11 This is a word that would have been exchanged from Greek into Latin back in ancient times. Modern dictionaries define the ancient word to mean disorder or disturbance with a second definition clarifying mental confusion, while the modern form of the word has 3 definitions escalating from small agitation to general disturbance to lastly a plural form.12 The description of disturbed seems to fit with the Mato the madman archetype that we see in the early fool cards.
Perhaps there are other early attestations of Tarocchi hiding amongst the other various languages and dialects around Italy. There was a literary trend around this time that pushed the limits of accepted speech by blending elements of colloquial speech and Latin into a vulgarized or Neo- Latin known as the Macaraonic language. While it wasn’t published until after 1521, some have argued that Giovan Giorgio Alione’s Frotula de le dòne was among the poet’s earlier works and possibly written prior to the turn of the XV century. Within it Giovan uses the expression d’i taroch in a passage about husbands and their unfaithful wives possibly meaning those fools however the poem is written in a bizarre verse with many hip Renaissance puns that can hardly be understood today.13
“Marì ne san dè au recioch
Secundum el Melchisedech
Lour fan hic.
Preve hic et hec
Ma i frà, hic et hec et hoc
Ancôr gli è – d’i taroch
Chi dan zù da Ferragù
Cole chi per so zovent
Ne se san fer der sul tasche
Con o temp devantran masche
Quant gnuni ni dirà pù nent
So dagn per ciò gl’abion el ment
Cho diao san furb el cù”
“The Men in this town don’t know how to satisfy their wives
As the good lord would say
They’re too busy with the hic and hec getting drunk
meanwhile the priests are off doing the hec and hoc with their wives.
And the Friars? They’re into the hic hec and hoc - they’re the worst out of all of them,
Still there are these fools,
these Ruffians, like you see coming down from Ferragù
Whose wives in their youth
Couldn’t manage their charms to secure a better husband
and will, in time, turn into old crones,
Then no one will pay them any mind anymore.
It is to their own misfortune, so let them be warned—
because the devil wipes his ass with it.”
[my translation based off of Andrea Vitali’s commentary]
Another poem in Macaronic verse that may better fit our criteria is this one about a toll collector written by Bassano Mantova in 1499. In this poem the narrator relates a humorous story where he was out with his mother law whom the toll collector foolishly mistook to be a prostitute.14
“Erat mecum mea socrus unde putana
Quod foret una sibi pensebat ille tarochus
Et cito ni solvam mihi menazare comenzat”
“My mother-in-law was with me, and he thought, the fool,
That she was one of those women.
Quickly, he began to threaten me if I didn’t pay at once.”
[Translation by ChatGPT]
If any of these pre-XV century references established an etymology it was not at all well-known even half a century later when Flavio Alberto Lollio Ferrarese, a humanist writer and translator, published his invective Contra il Giuoco del Taroco. In this work, Lollio used poetic verse to air his grievances with the game for wasting his time and causing idleness. He spent many verses takingup issues with the game’s hypothetical creator and speculating that he had been a drunken painter (among other things). Towards the end of the poem he ponders ‘… and that fantastic and bizarre name Of Tarroco, without etymology, Makes it clear to everyone, that his whims have been spoiled, and his brain crippled’ once again taking a stab at his strawman inventor of Tarot.15
Lollio’s father had been a member of the court in Ferrara and trusted with diplomatic duties. This put the young Lollio in a position to receive the finest education from court tutors. He was educated by renowned scholars specifically in Greek, philosophy and rhetoric and would go on to spend his entire career in linguistic pursuits be it writing or translation.16 Perhaps he missed something in the swirl of dialects going around at the time?
The word tarroco is used in modern Italian parlance to mean that something seems fake or fabricated.17 This expression is at least as old as the 18th century when a farmer was shown a new variety of blood orange that he just couldn’t believe.18 Is an expression of doubt the same as a fool or perhaps to be fooled? I thought of the example of Fool’s gold in English, could “only a fool would believe that’s gold” possibly have the same meaning as “you have to be kidding me about that blood orange” in Italian? And in an 18th century context?
Ultimately I don’t find any of these examples to be conclusive however I do think the fool theory has the best argument. It just that makes sense with Trionfi contested that the game would become known by its’ other signature mechanic. And thus the game of triumphs became the game of fools.
Works Cited
Thierry Depaulis, Entre farsa et barzelletta: jeux de cartes italiens autours de 1500, The Playing Card, Vol. 37 No. 2 (2008) [pg. 89-102]
Thierry Depaulis, Des "cartes communément appelées taraux" 1ère Partie, The Playing Card, Vol. 32, No. 5 (2004) [pg. 199-205]
* Also trionfi.com/0/p/23/
Michael Dummett with Sylvia Mann,
The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City (1980) [pg. 87]
* Also Moakley (1966)
Ibid. [pg. 178-180]
Sylvia Mann,
Collecting Playing Cards (1966) [pg. 28]
* Also Kaplan (1978), Place (2005)
Francesco Berni,
Capitolo del Gioco Della Primiera (1534) [pg. 18]
Francesco Piscina, via LeTarot.it
Discorso sopra la significatione de' tarocchi (1565) [pg. 26]
Giovanni Castoni,
Aldine Venice Lexicon Graeco-Latinum (1497)
* also Dionysis and Tarot and Tarot History Forum
Andrea Vitali, via LeTarot.it
Taroch 1494 (2008)
Flavio Alberto Lolllio Ferarese (via tarock.info),
Against the Game of Tarot (1550)
Angela's Symposium (YouTube@drangelapuca),
History of TAROT. From Game to Divination, youtube.com/watch?v=KEpqcOYiV8s
* Also etimo.it/?term=taroccare
wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange
*see also comments on this thread: languagehat.com/the-citrine-origins-of-tarot
Loved It. Especially language bits! Great work.
Fascinating!