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The Top 10: Foreign Words for Animals

From the seven-faced bird to the little chicken of the summer, the best literal translations of animal names

John Rentoul
Saturday 14 July 2018 09:28 BST
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Little sea pig, Meerschweinchen: guinea pig in German
Little sea pig, Meerschweinchen: guinea pig in German

This list arose from a comment on Twitter, in French, on Labour’s Brexit policy, saying Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, wanted une licorne. I was delighted to discover the theory that the word arose from a double error: the Latin unicorn was confused as un icorne, which then acquired the definite article as l’icorne.

This prompted Ian Blandford to say: “My favourite non-English word for an animal is pavo real which is Spanish for peacock but translates as ‘royal turkey’.” It doesn’t really: pavo is peafowl, a word that was adopted to name turkeys when they were discovered in the Americas, while real was added to denote the original peafowl or peacock. As for turkeys, more below.

1. Seven-faced bird: turkey in Japanese and Korean. Thanks to Arieh Kovler, who said that in Thai and Urdu, it is “elephant bird”. In Turkey, a turkey is called hindi, or India, said Enis Köylü (same is true in other countries, possibly because it came from the “Indies”). In Chinese, it is a fire chicken (thanks to Ben Knight).

2. Little sea pig, Meerschweinchen: guinea pig in German. Nominated by Mary Elwin and Mark Wallace. Guinea pigs hate water.

3. Little chicken of the summer, iâr fach yr haf: butterfly in Welsh. The usual word for butterfly in Welsh is pilipala, but there is also glöyn byw, which translates as something like “living glow”. Thanks to Michael Withey and Neil Wright. Moths are night butterflies (papillons de nuit) in French. “Can’t help thinking more people might like them if we called them that in English,” said Wilkie.

4. Naked snail, Nacktschnecke: slug in German. From Jonathan Isaby.

5. Pointed mouse, spidsmus: shrew in Danish. Nominated by Chris King.

6. Flutter mouse, Fledermaus: bat in German. Jonathan Isaby again.

7. Creature that really knows about honey, medved: bear in Russian. Hence (Dmitry) Medvedev, prime minister of Russia. Thanks to Andy McSmith.

8. The cow of our teacher, Moses, parat Moshe rabbeinu: ladybird in Hebrew. Arieh Kovler again. It comes via Yiddish from languages that call a ladybird “God’s little cow”, including Irish, Spanish, Polish, Russian. In Welsh it is “little red cow”, buwch goch gota.

9. Cat head eagle, maotouying: owl in Chinese. Thanks to Jonty Dixon. Several nominations for bear cat, Chinese for panda. And Kaya added bag rodent, Chinese for kangaroo.

10. Flower kisser, beija-flor: hummingbird in Portuguese. Nominated by David Landon Cole.

Some more good ones in Welsh from Michael Withey: snake’s servant, gwas y neidr (dragonfly) and wibbly wobbly fish, pysgod wibli wobli (jellyfish). And in German: belt animal, Gürteltier (armadillo) from Peter A Russell; and shield-toad, Schildkröte (tortoise) from Jonathan Isaby. Thanks to Xlibris1 for this German animal names flowchart by John-Erik Jordan.

A lot more nominations on this Twitter thread.

Next week: Album Title Puns, such as Ruth is Stranger than Richard, by Robert Wyatt

Coming soon: Bizarre Lyrics of National Anthems, starting with the reference (in French) to “the cynical malice … of neo-colonialism and its petty local servants” in that of Burkina Faso

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk

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