Mind your language | 12 June 2010

Disney has, I hear, decided to rename its animated film Rapunzel (due at cinemas in time for Advent) Tangled. It is thought that little boys would not want to go to see a film named after a heroine. But since Rapunzel herself is named after a root vegetable, they might perhaps have called the film Rampion instead. It has a manly sound, as if it were the name of a television detective. In the story that we vaguely remember from the Brothers Grimm, a man steals some rampion from an enchantress’s garden because his wife says: ‘If I can’t eat some of the rampion which is in the garden behind our house I shall die.’ Why the woman should want rampion, goodness knows. Campanula rapunculus is the bellflower, which, they tell me, has ivory-coloured roots tasting like filberts. But the tendency of a single name to refer to quite different species makes me fear being poisoned by boiling up a dish of supposed rampions.