“English” (the word) comes from the Angles, a tribe who lived in those parts and by all reports were pretty belligerent. But they also contributed a great deal to the language, including the odd detail that the English towns “Norfolk” and “Suffolk” were named by the Angles, because they were where the “north folk” and the “south folk” lived. In any case, if the Angles needed some soothing lotion after one of their battles, they probably would have wanted some “balm.” Technically if one of them had actually asked for “balm” nobody would have known what they were talking about because the word didn’t appear until the 1200s, but who are we to split hairs.
“Balm” is derived from the Greek “balsamon,” which means “balsam” (the tree), which is also derived from that Greek root. Apparently the sap from a balsam tree — or at least a compound made from it and some aromatic oils — does have some sort of medicinal applications, because “balm” was used for centuries. Many folk remedies like that really do work, it turns out. A similar substance was used to preserve the bodies the dead; that’s still reflected in the word “embalm.”
By the 1500s the word “balm” was being used figuratively as well as referring to the substance; it meant anything that had a healing influence. From there, “balmy” began to be used for mild, pleasant weather by the 1700s — everybody feels better on a nice day, right?
But then came the mid-1800s, when “balmy” arose as a slang term meaning cuckoo, nuts, six donuts short of a dozen, or, in two words, weak-minded. Nobody knows for sure how “balmy” came to be used this way; it doesn’t make any obvious sense that nice weather or healing salve would connote an intellectually challenged individual. But for whatever reason, “he’s balmy” still means “he’s loopy.” It’s more common in England than in the US, although it would probably be recognized here if you used it.
But it turns out there’s another British slang term that sounds so close to “balmy” that I, at least, always thought it meant the same thing. They’re used interchangeably for the most part today but the other term originally meant something different. The term is “barmy,” which also has its own unique origin. It comes from “barm,” which means the foam on the top of a glass of beer. Usage of “barmy” in a figurative way goes back to the 1600s, when it meant “excited” or “overwrought” — maybe on the basis that the bubbles in beer were “excited,” or maybe there was some connection to just how much beer had been consumed; the annals of etymology are silent on this point.
I’d be balmy (and/or barmy) if I neglected to circle back to the Angles, though; they need a bit more explanation. The name comes from “Anglia,” which is a peninsula that juts into the Baltic Sea and today is partly Germany and partly Denmark. Another word for this peninsula (the one that juts into the sea) is Jutland. The Angles came from that area and settled in England, bringing their Germanic language with them, after the Romans lost control of that part of the world. That would have been around the 3rd century CE or so.
Once they arrived in England (which before they arrived was called “Brittania,” and it still bears a form of that name), they eventually formed three separate kingdoms: Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. For several centuries the kingdoms kept quarreling, reforming, new realms were created, and things were just generally disorganized. It’s tempting to say that the noise and the mess from all this were so irritating that the next bunch of invaders arrived just to impose calm and order, but that next bunch was the Vikings in the 600s and they’re not really remembered for serenity or tidiness.
“England,” then, comes from a place name “Anglia” that’s based on a Proto-Indo-European word — but there’s some uncertainty about which word it was. It might have been from “angh,” which meant narrow or tight — the peninsula where they lived might be described that way. But another theory is that the word comes from the root word “ang,” which is also the root of “angle.” And remember that another word for fishing is “angling” — that’s because you use a hook for fishing, and a hook is bent. So “England”, in an etymological sense, either means “narrow land” or “land of fishermen.” And fishermen, as everybody knows, are out in rough, wet weather all the time. That’s a ripe environment for catching a cough or a cold, and in fact there’s a brand of throat drops on the market called “Fisherman’s Friend.” They’re soothing, aromatic lozenges — clearly a form of “balm.”
