Editor in Chief Aaron is here this week to talk about some zoological etymologies!

Earlier this week, we ran a round on Alaskan animals that contained a question about reindeer being the only domesticated species of deer. I’m embarrassed to admit that it was the first time in my life that I’d put together the roots of that word, which is a term that applies specifically to a domesticated caribou. To wit, a reindeer: it’s a deer with reins. (Of course, the actual etymology is more complicated than that.)

That naturally led to me wondering about other animal names. Obviously, the labels we choose to apply to our fellow members of the animal kingdom can be arbitrary — or just wrong, an ego trip, colored by colonial myopia, or plain old sucking-up to the powers that be. The post-Enlightenment-era orgy of taxonomy saw the world as a big blank ledger, each species waiting for its entry as some of the silliest shit you’ve ever seen.

But hey, it’s a big wide world with a lot of animals, and we have to call them something, so it’s probably to be expected that we end up with beetles named Agra cadabra and T. chewbacca, or the occasional bone-eating snot flower worm. I guess it’s self-evident that our names for animals largely arise from the nature of our relationships with them, but there are cases — like our friend the reindeer — where that linguistic link is more apparent than others.

Perhaps the best example of that is “cattle,” our word for (usually bovine) livestock. That comes to us directly from an Anglo-Saxon term for personal property, which was itself borrowed from the Latin “capitale.” (It’s worth noting too that “capitale” comes from “capitalis,” or “from the head,” which is still echoed when somebody, perhaps one of those grumpy “Yellowstone” ranchers, talks about “head” of cattle. It’s also where we get the term “chattel,” as in enslaved persons. Ew.) In other words, the utility of cattle is solely in being owned.

On the other side of the coin, we have “rat,” which through a long chain of Old English to Old French to Germanic, all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, arrives at our door from a word for “gnaw.” Simply put, rats are so named because they chew up all our stuff.

“Termite” has similar destructive origins. The Latin root “terrere” means “to erode.” They’re mites that erode your house. Lousy mites!

We owe “camel” to French, then to Latin and Greek and all the way back to Hebrew, Phoenician or the Proto-Semitic languages that gave rise to both. The word there is “gamal,” related to the bearing of burdens, and reflected in modern Arabic with “jamala,” or “to carry” — still the foundation of the main relationship between people and camels today.

“Halibut” is a more recent one, just dating from 16th-century English, but may have a more complicated etymology related to, like many British things, King Henry VIII’s doomed marriages. In the 1500s, the English Reformation took place because the pope wouldn’t grant Henry an annulment from Catherine of Aragon. Henry thus founded the Church of England and did away with many of the trappings of Catholicism, including the practice of abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. Jump forward half a century to when Henry’s daughter Elizabeth I is on the throne. The English fishing industry was in shambles as a result of Fridays regaining meat, with some fishermen even turning to piracy to make a living. Elizabeth thus passed the Navigation Act of 1563, which among other things built up the English Navy and contained a controversial clause requiring the eating of fish on Wednesdays, on Fridays, and during Lent. Promoted by Elizabeth’s minister Sir William Cecil, that clause became popularly known as “political Lent” or “Cecil’s Fast.”

The Navigation Act expanded English fleets, pushing fishing ships further into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, where they encountered more Atlantic halibut to bring home to a mandatorily fish-eating populace. At the time, a “butt” meant any sort of flatfish, like the bottom-dwelling halibut. And the “hali-” part? That comes from “holy,” perhaps to satisfy the “political Lent” of Elizabeth’s compulsory fish days. Halibut: they’re butts you eat on holy days.

By way of conclusion, here are a few more quick animal etymologies:

Stingray: It’s a ray that stings you.
Goat: from Proto-Indo-European “ghaid-o,” which also forms the words “to play” and gives us Latin “haedus,” or “kid.”
Skunk: from Proto-Algonquian “šeka:kwa,” meaning “pee fox.”
Bison: from Slavic or Baltic for “stinking.” The same root gives us “weasel.”
Chickens, geese, crows, and ravens: all based on old onomatopeia for the sounds they make.
Mountain chicken: It’s a frog. (Huh?)
And finally to come full circle: Caribou, from Algonquian “scratcher,” from its practice of pawing through snow to get to grass.

If you enjoyed this topic, allow me to point you to the incredible Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature database, home of entries like: “Brachyanax thelestrephones: Evenhuis, 1981 (fly). The name translates from Greek to ‘little chief nipple twister’” — and hey, you might also enjoy our Amazing Animals theme night, coming to you next month at select locations.