For more than a week, France has been sweating profusely. More than 70 departments spent a moment on red alert, a “rarely or never observed” peak in use of emergency care, the hottest night ever recorded in France… The scorching records continued to accumulate, while the heat wave was barely beginning to subside on Friday June 26.
To designate such a meteorological phenomenon, several countries use the fairly logical expression “heat wave”: “ola de calor” in Spanish, “hitzewelle” in German… Only the French stand out by speaking of “heatwave”. The etymology of this word is quite astonishing: it comes from the Latin “canicula”, a feminine word composed of canis (dog) and the diminutive suffix “cule” (“small”). But what is the link between the panic of the thermometer and our four-legged companions?
The explanation is to be found in the sky, and more precisely in the constellation Canis Major. According to ancient mythology, the latter represents the dog of Orion, who would have experienced the same fate as his master, transformed by Zeus upon his death into a group of stars.
The main star of this constellation is therefore called by the Romans “Canicula”. Located more than eight light years from Earth, it is the brightest of the fixed stars in our solar system, and has fascinated the ancients. Homer mentions it in the Iliad in the 8th century BC, and five hundred years later the Greek poet Aratos de Soles speaks of “a star that blazes with a burning flame”. Their compatriots also call it “Sirius”, from the Greek serios, “burning”.
The “dog days”, “period when the sea was boiling”
Above all, ancient scholars observed that the heliacal rising of Sirius – its reappearance at dawn above the horizon after having been obscured by sunlight for several weeks – coincided with the hottest period of the year, between mid-July and mid-August. They then imagined that the intense light of the star added to the heat of the sun, giving rise to the expression “dies caniculares” (“the days of the little dog”).
Before being shortened by the French to “canicule”, the formulation is used elsewhere. In 16th century England, the Hope Of Health – a guide for doctors – advised practitioners to refrain from bloodletting during “dogge days”, because at this time “nature is burned and weakened”. In the 19th century, the Clavis Calendria defined these “dog days” as “a period when the sea boiled, the wine turned, the dogs went crazy”.
In the south of France, accustomed to the burning rays of the sun, the reputation of the star Sirius gave birth to a whole family of words from spoken Latin “cania”. In colloquial language, the name “dodger” – from “canha”, which means “female dog” in old Provençal, and by extension niche – designates a “sunny place, sheltered from the wind” where the sun beats down.
