Where did the word Banquo originate?

Answer 1

In Shakespeare's play, MacBeth (1606), Banquo was a Scottish thane (roughly speaking, baron) whose murder was arranged by his former friend, Macbeth, an army general obsessed with becoming king, paranoid about the competition, and rapidly becoming insane through guilt over all the people he's killed to get his own way. MacBeth's wife shares and surpasses his ambition for power, and also goes mad.

The murdered Banquo's ghost appears to MacBeth during a banquet: the ghost comes into the room and sits in MacBeth's chair, which terrifies him. None of the guests can see Banquo, so they understandably consider MacBeth is becoming mentally unstable when he stops eating and argues at length with an empty seat.

Learned people argue about who Banquo was, whose ghost was it really, did the ghost really appear, and so on, quite forgetting that the play MacBeth isn't an attempt by Shakespeare to record history but simply his use of words in order to tell an exciting story, using bits of history and supposed history as a background, and to explore human nature in frequently uncomfortable depth.

It's still just a story, and in the story the ghost isBanquo's and it does come into the banquet and doesproceed to sit in MacBeth's chair.

The word banquet has nothing to do with Banquo who was considered by many, in Shakespeare's time and still today, to be a Scottish historical figure. Banquet comes from a French word for bench, as in a table for food. Maybe Banquo's name suggested the ghostly banquet scene to Shakespeare; only the writer knows for sure.