When, during the lazy autumn days, the living creatures seem for a time to
have taken themselves completely beyond our ken, it may be interesting to
delve among old records and descriptions of animals and see how the names
by which we know them first came to be given. Many of our English names
have an unsuspected ancestry, which, through past centuries, has been
handed down to us through many changes of spelling and meaning, of
romantic as well as historical interest.
How many people regard the scientific Latin and Greek names of animals
with horror, as being absolutely beyond their comprehension, and yet how
interesting these names become when we look them squarely in the face,
analyse them and find the appropriateness of their application.
When you say "wolf" to a person, the image of that wild creature comes
instantly to his mind, but if you ask him _why_ it is called a wolf, a
hundred chances to one he will look blankly at you. It is the old fault,
so common among us human beings, of ignoring the things which lie nearest
us. Or perhaps your friend shares the state of mind of the puzzled old
lady, who, after looking over a collection of fossil bones, said that she
could understand how these bones had been preserved, and millions of years
later had been discovered, but it was a mystery to her how anyone could
know the names of these ancient animals after such a lapse of time!
Some of the names of the commonest animals are lost in the dimness of
antiquity, such as fox, weasel, sheep, dog, and baboon. Of the origin of
these we have forever lost the clew. With camel we can go no farther back
than the Latin word _camelus_, and elephant balks us with the old Hindoo
word _eleph_, which means an ox. The old root of the word wolf meant one
who tears or rends, and the application to this animal is obvious. In
several English and German names of persons, we have handed down to us a
relic of the old fashion of applying wolf as a compliment to a warrior or
soldier. For example, Adolph means noble-wolf, and Rudolph glory-wolf.
Lynx is from the same Latin word as the word _lux_ (light) and probably
was given to these wildcats on account of the brightness of their eyes.
Lion is, of course, from the Latin _leo_, which word, in turn, is lost far
back in the Egyptian tongue, where the word for the king of beasts was
_labu_. The compound word leopard is first found in the Persian language,
where _pars_ stands for panther. Seal, very appropriately, was once a word
meaning "of the sea"; close to the Latin _sal_, the sea.
Many names of animals are adapted from words in the ancient language of
the natives in whose country the creatures were first discovered. Puma,
jaguar, tapir, and peccary (from _paquires_) are all names from South
American Indian languages. The coyote and ocelot were called _coyotl_ and
_ocelotl_ by the Mexicans long before Cortes landed on their shores.
Zebra, gorilla, and chimpanzee are native African words, and orang-utan is
Malay, meaning Man of the Woods. Cheetah is from some East Indian tongue,
as is tahr, the name of the wild goat of the Himalayas. Gnu is from the
Hottentots, and giraffe from the Arabic _zaraf_. Aoudad, the Barbary wild
sheep, is the French form of the Moorish name _audad_.
The native Indians of our own country are passing rapidly, and before many
years their race may be extinct, but their musical, euphonious names of
the animals they knew so well, often pleased the ear of the early
settlers, and in many instances will be a lasting memorial as long as
these forest creatures of our United States survive.
Thus, moose is from the Indian word _mouswah_, meaning wood-eater; skunk
from _seganku_, an Algonquin term; _wapiti_, in the Cree language, meant
white deer, and was originally applied to the Rocky Mountain goat, but the
name is now restricted to the American elk. Caribou is also an Indian
word; opossum is from _possowne_, and raccoon is from the Indian
_arrathkune_ (by further apheresis, coon).
Rhinoceros is pure Greek, meaning nose-horned, but beaver has indeed had a
rough time of it in its travels through various languages. It is hardly
recognisable as _bebrus_, _babbru_, and _bbru_. The latter is the ultimate
root of our word brown. The original application was, doubtless, on
account of the colour of the creature's fur. Otter takes us back to
Sanskrit, where we find it _udra_. The significance of this word is in its
close kinship to _udan_, meaning water.
The little mouse hands his name down through the years from the old, old
Sanskrit, the root meaning to steal. Many people who never heard of
Sanskrit have called him and his descendants by terms of homologous
significance! The word muscle is from the same root, and was applied from
a fancied resemblance of the movement of the muscle beneath the skin to a
mouse in motion--not a particularly quieting thought to certain members of
the fair sex! The origin of the word rat is less certain, but it may have
been derived from the root of the Latin word _radere_, to scratch, or
_rodere_, to gnaw. Rodent is derived from the latter term. Cat is also in
doubt, but is first recognised in _catalus_, a diminutive of _canis_, a
dog. It was applied to the young of almost any animal, as we use the words
pup, kitten, cub, and so forth. Bear is the result of tongue-twisting from
the Latin _fera_, a wild beast.
Ape is from the Sanskrit _kapi_; _kap_ in the same language means tremble;
but the connection is not clear. Lemur, the name given to that low family
of monkeys, is from the plural Latin word _lemures_, meaning ghost or
spectre. This has reference to the nocturnal habits, stealthy gait, and
weird expression of these large-eyed creatures. Antelope is probably of
Grecian origin, and was originally applied to a half-mythical animal,
located on the banks of the Euphrates, and described as "very savage and
fleet, and having long, saw-like horns with which it could cut down trees.
It figures largely in the peculiar fauna of heraldry."
Deer is of obscure origin, but may have been an adjective meaning wild.
Elk is derived from the same root as eland, and the history of the latter
word is an interesting one. It meant a sufferer, and was applied by the
Teutons to the elk of the Old World on account of the awkward gait and
stiff movements of this ungainly animal. But in later years the Dutch
carried the same word, eland, to South Africa, and there gave it to the
largest of the tribe of antelopes, in which sense it is used by zoologists
to-day.
Porcupine has arisen from two Latin words, _porcus_, a hog, and _spina_, a
spine; hence, appropriately, a spiny-hog. Buffalo may once have been some
native African name. In the vista of time, our earliest glimpse of it is
as _bubalus_, which was applied both to the wild ox and to a species of
African antelope. Fallow deer is from fallow, meaning pale, or yellowish,
while axis, as applied to the deer so common in zoological gardens, was
first mentioned by Pliny and is doubtless of East Indian origin. The word
bison is from the Anglo-Saxon _wesend_, but beyond Pliny its ultimate
origin eludes all research.
Marmot, through various distortions, looms up from Latin times as _mus
montanus_, literally a mountain mouse. Badger is from badge, in allusion
to the bands of white fur on its forehead. The verb meaning to badger is
derived from the old cruel sport of baiting badgers with dogs.
Monkey is from the same root as _monna_, a woman; more especially an old
crone, in reference to the fancied resemblance of the weazened face of a
monkey to that of a withered old woman. Madam and madonna are other forms
of words from the same root, so wide and sweeping are the changes in
meaning which usage and time can give to words.
Squirrel has a poetic origin in the Greek language; its original meaning
being shadow-tail. Tiger is far more intricate. The old Persian word _tir_
meant arrow, while _tighra_ signified sharp. The application to this great
animal was in allusion to the swiftness with which the tiger leaps upon
his prey. The river Tigris, meaning literally the river Arrow, is named
thus from the swiftness of its current.
As to the names of reptiles it is, of course, to the Romans that we are
chiefly indebted, as in the case of reptile from _reptilus_, meaning
creeping; and crocodile from _dilus_, a lizard. Serpent is also from the
Latin _serpens_, creeping, and this from the old Sanskrit root, _sarp_,
with the same meaning. This application of the idea of creeping is again
found in the word snake, which originally came from the Sanskrit _naga_.
Tortoise harks back to the Latin _tortus_, meaning twisted (hence our word
tortuous) and came to be applied to these slow creatures because of their
twisted legs. In its evolution through many tongues it has suffered
numbers of variations; one of these being turtle, which we use to-day to
designate the smaller land tortoises. Terrapin and its old forms
_terrapene_ and _turpin_, on the contrary, originated in the New World, in
the language of the American Redskin.
_Cobra-de-capello_ is Portuguese for hooded snake, while python is far
older, the same word being used by the Greeks to denote a spirit, demon,
or evil-soothsayer. This name was really given to designate any species of
large serpent. _Boa_ is Latin and was also applied to a large snake, while
the importance of the character of size is seen, perhaps, in our words
_bos_ and _bovine_.
The word viper is interesting; coming directly from the Romans, who wrote
it _vipera_. This in turn is a contraction of the feminine form of the
adjective _vivipera_, in reference to the habit of these snakes of
bringing forth their young alive.
Lizard, through such forms as _lesarde_, _lezard_, _lagarto_, _lacerto_,
is from the Latin _lacertus_, a lizard; while closely related is the word
alligator by way of _lagarto_, _aligarto_, to alligator. The prefix may
have arisen as a corruption of an article and a noun, as in the modern
Spanish _el lagarto_,--a lizard.
Monitor is Latin for one who reminds, these lizards being so called
because they are supposed to give warning of the approach of crocodiles.
Asp can be carried back to the _aspis_ of the Romans, no trace being found
in the dim vistas of preceding tongues.
Gecko, the name of certain wall-hunting lizards, is derived from their
croaking cry; while iguana is a Spanish name taken from the old native
Haytian appellation _biuana_.
Of the word frog we know nothing, although through the medium of many
languages it has had as thorough an evolution as in its physical life. We
must also admit our ignorance in regard to toad, backward search revealing
only _tade_, _tode_, _ted_, _toode_, and _tadie_, the root baffling all
study. Polliwog and tadpole are delightfully easy. Old forms of polliwog
are _pollywig_, _polewiggle_, and _pollwiggle_. This last gives us the
clew to our spelling--_pollwiggle_, which, reversed and interpreted in a
modern way, is wigglehead, a most appropriate name for these lively little
black fellows. Tadpole is somewhat similar; toad-pole, or toad's-head,
also very apt when we think of these small-bodied larval forms.
Salamander, which is a Greek word of Eastern origin, was applied in the
earliest times to a lizard considered to have the power of extinguishing
fire. Newt has a strange history; originating in a wrong division of two
words, "_an ewte_," the latter being derived from _eft_, which is far more
correct than newt, though in use now in only a few places. Few fishermen
have ever thought of the interesting derivation of the names which they
know so well. Of course there are a host of fishes named from a fancied
resemblance to familiar terrestrial animals or other things; such as the
catfish, and those named after the dog, hog, horse, cow, trunk, devil,
angel, sun, and moon.
The word fish has passed through many varied forms since it was _piscis_
in the old Latin tongue, and the same is true of shark and skate, which in
the same language were _carcharus_ and _squatus_. Trout was originally
_tructa_, which in turn is lost in a very old Greek word, meaning eat or
gnaw. Perch harks back to the Latin _perca_, and the Romans had it from
the Greeks, among whom it meant spotted. The Romans said _minutus_ when
they meant small, and nowadays when we speak of any very small fish we say
minnow. Alewife in old English was applied to the women, usually very
stout dames, who kept alehouses. The corpulency of the fish to which the
same term is given explains its derivation.
The pike is so named from the sharp, pointed snout and long, slim body,
bringing to mind the old-time weapon of that name; while pickerel means
doubly a little pike, the _er_ and _el_ (as in cock and cockerel) both
being diminutives. Smelt was formerly applied to any small fish and comes,
perhaps, from the Anglo-Saxon _smeolt_, which meant smooth--the smoothness
and slipperiness of the fish suggesting the name.
Salmon comes directly from the Latin _salmo_, a salmon, which literally
meant the leaper, from _salire_--to leap. Sturgeon, from the Saxon was
_stiriga_, literally a stirrer, from the habit of the fish of stirring up
the mud at the bottom of the water. Dace, through its mediaeval forms
_darce_ and _dars_, is from the same root as our word dart, given on
account of the swiftness of the fish.
Anchovy is interesting as perhaps from the Basque word _antzua_, meaning
dry; hence the dried fish; and mullet is from the Latin _mullus_. Herring
is well worth following back to its origin. We know that the most marked
habit of fishes of this type is their herding together in great schools or
masses or armies. In the very high German _heri_ meant an army or host;
hence our word harry and, with a suffix, herring.
_Hake_ in Norwegian means hook, and the term hake or hook-fish was given
because of the hooked character of the under-jaw. Mackerel comes from
_macarellus_ and originally the Latin _macula_--spotted, from the dark
spots on the body. Roach and ray both come from the Latin _raria_, applied
then as in the latter case now to bottom-living sharks.
Flounder comes from the verb, which in turn is derived from flounce, a
word which is lost in antiquity. Tarpon (and the form _tarpum_) may be an
Indian word; while there is no doubt as to grouper coming from _garrupa_,
a native Mexican name. Chubb (a form of cub) meant a chunky mass or lump,
referring to the body of the fish. Shad is lost in _sceadda_, Anglo-Saxon
for the same fish.
Lamprey and halibut both have histories, which, at first glance, we would
never suspect, although the forms have changed but little. The former have
a habit of fastening themselves for hours to stones and rocks, by means of
their strong, sucking mouths. So the Latin form of the word _lampetra_, or
literally lick-rock, is very appropriate. Halibut is equally so. _But_ or
_bot_ in several languages means a certain flounder-like fish, and in
olden times this fish was eaten only on holidays (_i.e._, holy days).
Hence the combination halibut means really holy-flounder.
The meaning of these words and many others are worth knowing, and it is
well to be able to answer with other than ignorance the question "What's
in a name?"