THE NAMES OF ANIMALS, FROGS, AND FISH
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 mediæval 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?”