The word "undine" was created by the medieval author Paracelsus, who used it for female water spirits.
Ralph Marvell recognizes the poetry in the name and assumes it refers to the poetic French phrase "divers et ondoyant" meaning "diverse and undulating". Mrs. Spragg responds by explaining the mundane origins of her daughters name. Undine was named for "a hair-waver her father put on the market the week she was born", itself taken from "UNdoolay, you know, the French for crimping". (Chapter V) The phrase appears in Montaigne's essay "By diverse means we arrive at the same end": "Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him."[5]
