A pot of beans that ended on the kitchen floor—on the way to being soaked for some hours—caused a discussion of that, you know, that fairy tale, the girl who had to count beans or peas or something. Can you think of the name of that? Snow White it certainly was not, nor Sleeping Beauty, nor Little Red Riding Hood. At last it came to us—but in its German version, which was done by the Brothers Grimm: Aschenputtel. Cinderella.
When it comes to fairy tales, the original author is usually lost in the mists of time. So with our Aschenputtel. The second part, puttel, is not present in German, but some scholars think that it comes from buddeln, to dig, thus “ash digger.” But since there is a German word for a lowly servant, a scullion or kitchen helper, called Aschenbrödel, it might be safer to assume that the Grimm brothers formed that ending to suit themselves. The word is treated as a masculine noun, hence one experiences the fascinating linguistic phenomenon, reading the German version, of having our Cinderella referred to as “he” in contexts where that name appears. But for the German-speaker that produces no dissonance at all.
Now there are clear differences between cinders and ashes, so why do the Germans use ash? Cinder is hard slag, ashes are dusty. The German for it is Sinter. The reason for the usage is because the Grimms translated Cendrillon (that’s our Cinderella), and the word for ashes in French is cendre.
The story appears to originate in China circa 850 AD (Online Etymology Dictionary). Its “recent” history begins in 1634 when it appeared in a collection of stories written by Giambattista Basile in Italian; there she is called “Cenerentola.” Next came the French version by Charles Perrault, “Cendrillon.” The Grimm’s version appeared in 1812.
Well worth reading the story using grown-up eyes (link). Like all such tales, it has endless levels of meaning. In the modern day it mirrors the experience of children who undergo the traumas of divorce.
The man [Aschenputtel’s father] had taken another wife. The woman had brought with her into the house two daughters, who were beautiful and fair of face, but vile and black of heart…
