Where does the title of Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" come from?

Question

Why did he choose precisely that title? Is there talk about some rose in his novel?

Answer 1

Yes, Ira is quite correct in the answer. The title of the novel does indeed come from the last quote, "stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus".
Only that the literal translation of this is rather "The rose of the past stays solely by its name, all that we hold are the naked (bare) names". This would mean a little more - and even if I go a little far from Eco's "intentio", I'll surely not cross the limits of the interpretation, as in the case of this novel, they are quite far away. So, indeed, all that we hold from the things and facts that have come to pass is their name, only a string of words, a string of signs. But what's more, it might be that the only thing we can truly hold at all is the sign - with this I'm interpreting the second part of the quote. It might be that the only "thing" that is truly in our possession be always only the sign of the object or the fact that is "out there", a sign that might conform itself to the fact, or that might not. After all, this was also Guglielmos's pain in the end of the book - he discovers that all the signs he held were wrong, or that his interpretations of them were wrong, and this is just one thing that might occur to any of us at any moment concerning almost anything. Of course, if we believe that there might be a "good interpretation" and "a wrong one", indeed. So, all that we hold indeed are the signs, anything else is transient or illusory. And, well, I think that Eco chose that title also because he might have wanted to communicate all these things.

(all this, of course, if I remember the novel correctly, and if my own former interpretations - that I might just have remembered instead of remembering the novel - were decent... I should really reread it, only I am afraid that it will not impress on me as it did back then.)

Answer 2

Much attention has been paid to the mystery of what the title of the novel refers to. In fact, when he had finished writing the novel, Eco hurriedly suggested some ten names for it and asked a few of his friends to choose one. They chose "The name of the rose". Eco liked the choice because it seemed to him to be full of often contradictory meanings as indeed the rose has been a (rather too) frequently used symbol in the history of literature and mysticism.

The book's last line, "Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus" would roughly translate as "Of the rose of the past, we have only its name". The general sense, as Eco pointed out, was that from the beauty of the past, now disappeared, we hold only the name. This would be true to the Aristotle's lost book on comedy, whose last copy would now be forever lost, the exquisite library now destroyed, the beautiful peasant girl now dead. We only know them by the description Adso provides us - we only have the name of the book on comedy, not its contents. The original verse, written by twelfth century monk Bernardo Morliacense in "De contemptu mundi", referred to Roma (Rome), not rosa (rose). Thus of the old Rome of legend, at Morliacense's days he knew only the name.

Answer 3

They key is the end of the book:

Eco's own Reflections on The Name of the Rose (1985) explains how the title derives from the Latin hexameter with which the book ends: 'Stat rosa prístina ... nomina nuda tenemus

It has to do with the "passing of things" that the dying rose - all that remains "is its name".



12th century poem: by Benard of Culnty
None ubi Regulus? aut ubi Romulus, aut ubi Remus? Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.”