narcissus: [16] The plant-name narcissus goes back via Latin to Greek narkissos. Writers of ancient times such as Pliny and Plutarch connected it with Greek nárkē ‘numbness’ (source of English narcotic), a tempting inference given the plant’s sedative effect, but in fact it probably came from an unknown pre- Greek Aegean language. In Greek mythology the name passed to a vain youth who was punished by the gods for spurning the love of Echo.
They made him fall in love with the reflection of his beautiful features in a pool. He died gazing at his own image and was changed into a narcissus plant. In the 19th century his story inspired the word narcissism. At first it was just a general term for excessive self-admiration and self-centredness, but in the 1890s (probably at the hands of the sexologist Havelock Ellis) it became a technical term for a specific personality disorder marked by those traits.
