The UK supermarket chain has the motto MERCATORES COENASCENT. Mercatores is merchants but the second word has me foxed. Anybody got any thoughts?
It seems like whoever devised the motto conjugated nascor like a second conjugation verb in the active voice, for whatever reason. Remember that nascor, nasci, natus sum is a deponent verb and, as such, is conjugated as passive although it may have an active meaning. Enascor is just an alternate orthography of nascor and by adding the prefix co- we end up with "born at the same time"--that's somewhat redundant, but given the lack of context in a brief motto, it can be justified. Following this line of reasoning, I believe they intended to use mercatores coenascuntur, "merchants are born together," to add, I suppose, a sense of camaraderie. At any rate, this is what I conjecture. In this page the author claims not even Tesco knows what the motto means among other comments on strange or nonsensical mottoes in Latin.
Here's a wild theory: Perhaps the motto was mis-transcribed at some point (I have no idea how old this supermarket chain is, but any major business using a Latin motto these days has likely had it for a while, especially one which claims it "doesn't know what the motto means"). I say this because Coenas is a legitimate spelling of cenas, a word which means "dinners" (quite appropriate for a supermarket). And if the second part of this word was originally spelled cient, we'd end up with: Mercatores coenas cient - "Merchants produce dinners." Cient is admittedly a less common word than, say, parant or faciunt, but it does have the connotation of providing something quickly, and at least now the motto makes sense for a supermarket.
