You say tomato and I say tomahto

[martelvonc]

Interesting thing this.

Why do the names of embroidery stitches change? If someone names a stitch, and it works very well, why does someone down the road feel the need to change it?

Do things just get lost in translation?

Did someone in a fit of petulance say "I DON'T like that name and you can't make me use it!"?

The world may never know....

Comments

[cozit.livejournal.com]

People learn, or figure out a stitch without knowing the name and come up with one that works for them. Someone else hears it and it sticks with them (like "the frog stitch" for ripping out stitches, never heard of before about 10 years ago, it seems nearly universal across needlework types, including yarn needlework, now).

Or they learn from someone from a different area who has learned another name from way back when.

I can understand changes like "nun's stitch".. it's more "interesting" than "four-sided stitch". And I can see how Holbein, and Spanish came to be descriptions of a double-running stitch... but the number of names for different knots and the same knots drives me nuts, though.