Our ancestors had more problems at school than we have nowadays. Many of them (at least those who were on the way to the university) could only do so by learning Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew. Nobody asked whether this was necessary if you were off to design camera lenses. But, as sometimes becomes clear to us as well, things prove to have been worthwhile later, i.e. when you come across the problem of naming them.
Triotar - three lens elements (self-explanatory for Indo-Europeans)
Tessar - four lens elemnts (tessares or tettares = four in Greek)
Sonnar - named after Sonne (German for Sun)
Heliar - same in Greek (Helios = Sun)
Summar - for maximum (quality, I suppose - from summus = highest in Latin)
Biogon - for life (bios in Greek) (caught in a wide-) angle (gon-y for knee or angle in Greek)
Apotar and other lenses starting with Apo - "free from" (lens faults, colour faults) in Greek
Nokton, Noctilux - from the Latin suffix noct- for night
-lux - a lens suffix from the Latin word for light
Ok, let's have a quick learning control:
Summi-lux. What does it mean?
Highest Light? 100 points!
It was/is also common to include part of the brand name in the lens name like
Rodagon by Rodenstock
Agnar by Agfa
Nikkor by Nikon etc. etc.
Among the first ones to use these phantasy names were probably the Leica people.
Elmar and Elmax are said to be abbreviations of Ernst Leitz Maximar (with the Latin Maximum again) - though Elmar is also a less common male first name in Germany, and
Hektor (again derived from Greek, the name of a Trojan hero in Homer's Iliad) is even said to just have been the name of the lens constructor's dog...!
Gimme more of that stuff, I like it!
Jesko
