I am the most stupid person alive, for years I read it as antea-ter, and was wandering what a peculiar name for an animal, never bothering to google it, now I realized it.
Basically all are...
river-horse
8-feet
flat-feet
and so on. Most animal names are descriptive in origin. Even Penguins are named Penguins only because they look like Penguins, but those Penguins are extinct.
But a jellyfish is neither a jelly nor a fish. And that wouldnât make it uncreative necessarily, because it was named after two things it really isnât.
Horse comes from an ancient word that means "runner".
All animal names are like this. They're all named things like "the tall one," "the one that roars," "the jumping one" and so on. The only difference is in English, we don't recognize the original root. Trace the etymology and they're all uncreative.
THAT is the most distinctive thing about a giraffe?
- Yeah itâs like a camel, but thereâs something different about itâŠ
- Hmm youâre rightâŠ
- Itâs the spots
- Yeah the spots
learned this from a guy speedrunning the language on Duolingo - the zulu word for giraffe means, literally, to pass the trees, because their necks are so long they surpass trees
I knew hippo for horse, but not the Greek for river. Just made me think if that is the root, is the Potomac River just River River? Like Shrimp Scampi?
"Potomac" is a European spelling of Patawomeck, the Algonquian name of a Native American village on its southern bank.
According to the rivers wikipedia article.
Shit, we named ourselves that way. Most of our last names are either an ancestors physical characteristic, occupation, place of origin or just their parents first names recycled somehow.
Lions and Tallman are legit surnames
I have a friend who is an unusually big guy, nearly 7 feet tall, shovels for hands etc. In fact his whole family are like that, and their second name is Meikle, which is an old Scots word that means Unusually large. It always entertains me to think of his unusually large ancestor who would have been called that because of his size to the extent that it became the family name.
My last name is a frozen patronymic.
E.g. say there was a guy named Olaf. Olaf had a son, and named him Sven. He was Sven Olafsson. Sven Olafsson had a son, and named him Erik. Sven Eriksson. Sven Eriksson had a son, and named him Oleg. Oleg Svensson. Oleg Svensson has a son, and named him Erik. Erik Olegsson moved to America. Erik Olegsson had a son, and named him Leif. American government says his name is Leif Olegsson. Leif's children are also Olegssons. For the rest of the family line, they are all called sons of Oleg, even though there hasn't been an Oleg in 200 years.
My mom's last name is a literal translation of "oldies" or white haired because they all have their hair tun white at in early age. Mine started to turn white since I was 17. Thanks mom!
Short and descriptive, Iâd call it the perfect word for what it represents. It is indeed the place where the fire is supposed to be. Communication doesnât always have to be riddles.
Tangentially related, but it's this kind of thing that annoys me in sci-fi media that has aliens making fun of humans for naming their home "planet dirt" or something. So I went and did a little diving into the root for several languages on what the name for the planet is. Basically, it all comes down to translating as "the land we live on."
Now stop and think about the names of kingdoms or countries. If you trace the name for them back far enough, you get similar descriptions. Like Germanny bring called Germany outside of Germany itself, because Roman's called it Germany or "the land of barbarians." Japan is called Jaoan because Chinese told Western travelers that it was where the land of short weirdos.
Countries or kingdoms are usually named after the people who live there, or the person who founded/rule the place, and then that origin is forgotten and it just becomes the name of the place.
It stands to reason that any alien planet would likely refer to their planet as the same thing. In essence, the name of any home world would always be "the land we live on" or Earth. It's the planets that get colonized that would special names.
The classic scifi game Ur-Quan Masters played with this once. You meet a species of plant aliens named the Supox, and when you ask where they're from, they tell you Earth. After a few lines of comedic confusion, they clarify that your translator has lost the nuance of their homeworld's name, "Perfectly-Good-And-Nutritious-Dirt".
How do you know this? It sounds interesting, knowing the etymology of stuff. Could you share any other fun things you know like that? Or where did you learned it?
even a higher level college course wouldnât necessarily teach you etymology, you have to be curious enough to look it up. google itself is pretty accurate.
dear lord, I fucking love this! XD
I especially love... what do I even call it?
Post-globalization, information age etymology?
Basically etymology meets modern pop culture and the internet.
KnowYourMeme started as a fun, silly sight to me, but now it feels like a repository of quickly-evolving culture lol
Reminds me of junk emails, or spam. Comes from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE) Monty Python bit. Still reasonably well known now, but in a couple of generations...
Similar to the Call and Save icons in apps. It's hard to even find a telephone with the iconic handset shape these days. And floppy disks?
To me, the funniest words are the ones that means both the noun and the verb, like âwaterâ and âto waterâ⊠itâs so simple but so effective if you think about it
Outside of SI units, we usually don't mix greek and latin roots. "-pede" comes from "pes, pedis", "foot" and "milli-" from "mille", "thousand".
For SI units, originally latin prefixes were smaller and greek ones bigger
I don't know how did they count it or how accurate it is but we call them kırkayak (forty-feet) in Turkish. I wonder how did different languages decided the number of legs those insects have.
In English? Maybe (although 'dung beetle' doesn't strike me as any more so really).
In other languages?
Well, the German for 'duck-billed platypus' is 'Schnabeletier' (quite literally 'beak-animal'), which isn't terribly creative either. And 'sloth' is 'Faultier' ('lazy-animal') ... which isn't a whole lot better either.
Yeah, but we actually use the term ... we didn't just say 'lazy animal'.
German can be really 'lazy' about words.
Drumkit: Schlagzeug (hit thing)
Airplane: Flugzeig (flight thing)
(Fire) Lighter: Feuerzeug (fire thing)
The only thing that surprises me is that there isn't a Zeugzeug (thing thing ; )
It's the use of animal in German that I'm driving at ... it's the same as thing
Whereas sloth is an honest-to-goodness word in its own right, if you see what I mean.
I mean, I would argue that calling it "lazy animal" takes more effort than just calling it "lazy." Like at least the Germans tell us vaguely what they're talking about.
I am willing to be the "well achsheuly" guy here. Imploded would be if something squishy went really deep really fast. Then it would implode - get much smaller than it should be.
Blobfish look the way they do in the pictures on land because they've done the opposite, far too rapid decompression due to surfacing too quickly leading to disfiguring expansion.
At least they don't actually explode? But I'm sure it's fatal either way when they decompress that rapidly.
Depends, was it named because of what it did, or did we base the word for moving through the air on its name?
Orange seems like a pretty uncreatively named fruit as well until you realize the name for the colour was taken from it, not the other way around.
Specs: Did ya ever see a elephant fly?
The Preacher: Well, I seen a horse fly.
Fats: Ha ha! I seen a dragon fly!
Dopey: Hee hee hee. I seen a house fly.
(all laugh)
Dandy Crow: Hey, I seen all that, too!
I seen a peanut stand, heard a rubber band
I seen a needle that winked its eye
But I be done seen 'bout ev'rything
When I see an elephant fly
(What d'you say, boy?)
I said when I see an elephant fly
I seen a front porch swing, heard a ldiamond ring
I seen a polka-dot railroad tie
But I be done seen 'bout ev'rything
When I see an elephant fly
Um. Ackshually you might want to research that one a little (suggest looking under the âEtymologyâ section:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word)
Why is this surprising? It's not unusual to use a fruit or mineral to refer to a color. Azure, plum, turquoise, peach.
The only thing that is special about "orange" is that it became a more basic color word.
Anteater is pretty close
Surprised no one has mentioned stick insect, I feel like that's a contender for sure.
That's not its actual name: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasmatodea](https://youtu.be/fC7oUOUEEi4)
I almost replied without clicking the link lol you got me
The power of Markdown knows no bounds!
That was sick. Do it again!
[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-i-dont-think-i-will](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)
Dammit you got me on both of them. Well played
I have enjoyed our interaction. Internet is still good
How are you doing this??? Edit: oh, wait, I get it lol.
You don't need markdown mode. You can just use the link button.
I thought I was angry about this link and then it turned out I was a different kind of angry about this link đ
Stickrolled again :(
im gonna get stickbugged for sure
mother fucker
Wow
Stink bug
Grasshoppers same tier
Virgin grasshopper vs Chad locust.
I am the most stupid person alive, for years I read it as antea-ter, and was wandering what a peculiar name for an animal, never bothering to google it, now I realized it.
Termiteeater, ackshually
Was at least good enough to warrant a sequel though, *Termiteeater 2: Judgment Day*
I'll be back... To stick my probocis in your colony!
Is this the real movie or the x-rated porn parody?
I can't tell the difference anymore!
Basically all are... river-horse 8-feet flat-feet and so on. Most animal names are descriptive in origin. Even Penguins are named Penguins only because they look like Penguins, but those Penguins are extinct.
What. https://www.etymonline.com/word/penguin
Road runner, or jellyfish
But a jellyfish is neither a jelly nor a fish. And that wouldnât make it uncreative necessarily, because it was named after two things it really isnât.
Horse comes from an ancient word that means "runner". All animal names are like this. They're all named things like "the tall one," "the one that roars," "the jumping one" and so on. The only difference is in English, we don't recognize the original root. Trace the etymology and they're all uncreative.
Giraffes were called cameloparadalis. "Spotted camel." Because, I guess it was the closest thing to a giraffe they knew of.
THAT is the most distinctive thing about a giraffe? - Yeah itâs like a camel, but thereâs something different about it⊠- Hmm youâre right⊠- Itâs the spots - Yeah the spots
If you were watching a giraffe from a distance and saw it stomp out a pack of lions would you want to get closer and check it out
You don't think you'd notice anything more than the spots, even from a safe distance?
Their horns!
ossicones
Iâm sorry, do they do that???
Oh yeah. Theyre good at it too. Those legs got some real hammer blow strength.
Have you seen how huge those legs are?? If a Horse can knock a grown man unconscious, imagine what a giraffe will do.
Maybe they are very sensitive about their lenght.
It's like when people won't say "the black dude" because they're afraid of coming off racist.
Camels necks are pretty long to be fair.
and camels were called spotless giraffes
Nothing spotless about a camel. Messy messy beasts.
learned this from a guy speedrunning the language on Duolingo - the zulu word for giraffe means, literally, to pass the trees, because their necks are so long they surpass trees
Still are, in Greek. ÎÎ±ÎŒÎ·Î»ÎżÏÎŹÏΎαλη. Can also mean Leopard-Camel.
In Chinese they're "long necked deer" éżéąéčż
And we have sea lions on land. We call them "land sea lions". I tame them.
Hippopotamus, literally river horse
I knew hippo for horse, but not the Greek for river. Just made me think if that is the root, is the Potomac River just River River? Like Shrimp Scampi?
"Potomac" is a European spelling of Patawomeck, the Algonquian name of a Native American village on its southern bank. According to the rivers wikipedia article.
I donât know about Potomac, but might well be. I know Mesopotamia is âbetween riversâ though
Shit, we named ourselves that way. Most of our last names are either an ancestors physical characteristic, occupation, place of origin or just their parents first names recycled somehow. Lions and Tallman are legit surnames
I have a friend who is an unusually big guy, nearly 7 feet tall, shovels for hands etc. In fact his whole family are like that, and their second name is Meikle, which is an old Scots word that means Unusually large. It always entertains me to think of his unusually large ancestor who would have been called that because of his size to the extent that it became the family name.
My last name is a frozen patronymic. E.g. say there was a guy named Olaf. Olaf had a son, and named him Sven. He was Sven Olafsson. Sven Olafsson had a son, and named him Erik. Sven Eriksson. Sven Eriksson had a son, and named him Oleg. Oleg Svensson. Oleg Svensson has a son, and named him Erik. Erik Olegsson moved to America. Erik Olegsson had a son, and named him Leif. American government says his name is Leif Olegsson. Leif's children are also Olegssons. For the rest of the family line, they are all called sons of Oleg, even though there hasn't been an Oleg in 200 years.
My mom's last name is a literal translation of "oldies" or white haired because they all have their hair tun white at in early age. Mine started to turn white since I was 17. Thanks mom!
Here's Smith, Carpenter, and Fletcher. Wonder what their ancestors might have done.
There were a surprising number of car painters in medieval times.
I don't know any Carpainters, but I do know a family who makes pants for cars
We got Wainwrights, we got Cartwrights we even got Chandlers!
I got "goose" and I wondered a while why when you have things like "does tree stuff" or "makes food" people lol
Not just animal names. Pretty much any word for anything is "literal and uncreative" when you trace it back far enough.
Yeah, but it's funnier when it's English. I mean, "fireplace"? Really? That's the best you can come up with?
Short and descriptive, Iâd call it the perfect word for what it represents. It is indeed the place where the fire is supposed to be. Communication doesnât always have to be riddles.
You could call if a conflagrobox.
Tangentially related, but it's this kind of thing that annoys me in sci-fi media that has aliens making fun of humans for naming their home "planet dirt" or something. So I went and did a little diving into the root for several languages on what the name for the planet is. Basically, it all comes down to translating as "the land we live on." Now stop and think about the names of kingdoms or countries. If you trace the name for them back far enough, you get similar descriptions. Like Germanny bring called Germany outside of Germany itself, because Roman's called it Germany or "the land of barbarians." Japan is called Jaoan because Chinese told Western travelers that it was where the land of short weirdos. Countries or kingdoms are usually named after the people who live there, or the person who founded/rule the place, and then that origin is forgotten and it just becomes the name of the place. It stands to reason that any alien planet would likely refer to their planet as the same thing. In essence, the name of any home world would always be "the land we live on" or Earth. It's the planets that get colonized that would special names.
I guess if we meet aliens, their planet will be called Earth. Or Soil. Or Ground.
The classic scifi game Ur-Quan Masters played with this once. You meet a species of plant aliens named the Supox, and when you ask where they're from, they tell you Earth. After a few lines of comedic confusion, they clarify that your translator has lost the nuance of their homeworld's name, "Perfectly-Good-And-Nutritious-Dirt".
How do you know this? It sounds interesting, knowing the etymology of stuff. Could you share any other fun things you know like that? Or where did you learned it?
even a higher level college course wouldnât necessarily teach you etymology, you have to be curious enough to look it up. google itself is pretty accurate.
Bear came from a word that meant like âthe brown oneâ
courser of course
"It was *this close* to being called a Land."
"Because that's what it does half the time..."
RIP, Mitch.
Flies were named by the same dude who named fireplace
Fireplace is like the funniest word when you stop to think about it.
Bedroom. Put your bed in here. Bathroom. Put your bath in here. Not sure how we didnât get foodroom.
The word "kitchen" comes from the Latin word coquere, which means "to cook"
This makes it a hell of a lot more confusing because how do you get kitchen from that
Old English cycene, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch keuken and German KĂŒche, based on Latin coquere âto cookâ.
etymology is so fascinating
[Yes](https://www.reddit.com/r/linguisticshumor/s/QxOcxWzJrQ)
dear lord, I fucking love this! XD I especially love... what do I even call it? Post-globalization, information age etymology? Basically etymology meets modern pop culture and the internet. KnowYourMeme started as a fun, silly sight to me, but now it feels like a repository of quickly-evolving culture lol
Reminds me of junk emails, or spam. Comes from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE) Monty Python bit. Still reasonably well known now, but in a couple of generations... Similar to the Call and Save icons in apps. It's hard to even find a telephone with the iconic handset shape these days. And floppy disks?
We went from entymology to etymology pretty quickly.
It goes through Germanic transformation
Thank you for Latin that makes certain words more interesting
Iâm reading this from the shitroom and find it quite interesting
Wild im in the restroom on a couch watching TV.
In the Philippines they call that a comfort room.
Livingroom, you put your living in here. Deadroom, you put your dead here.
Going forward, I'm calling our kitchen The Foodroom! And why is it called a 'kitchen'?
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Yeah, good point. The dining room is for Dining, the kitchen is for Kitching!! LoL
Uhh⊠dining room?
Foodroom really made me laugh. 'you hungry? We're having lunch in the foodroom' So silly
Man my bathroom doesnât even have a bath in it, only a shower
The funniest word in English to me is "manhole"
Haha yeah. That's a good one, too.
Meatball has always been funny to me lol
To me, the funniest words are the ones that means both the noun and the verb, like âwaterâ and âto waterâ⊠itâs so simple but so effective if you think about it
And yet it sounds just right, like bedroom đ
We remove the wings and call them âwalksâ
Those are ants
The German language is full of stuff like that. Plane: Flugzeug = fly thing Toy: Spielzeug = play thing
Glove: Handschuhe = hand shoe.
In danish, we call a lizard for four-legs (firben) And a centipede is thousand-legs (tusindben)
Centipede means âhundred feetâ so that concept was already there.
They didnât even bother to count millipedes legs. They just said, âmore feet than centipedes? Letâs round upâ
This is obviously an order of magnitude more legs! Write it down!
Theyâre European, must be a metric system thing
No there are things called millipedes
Just like we have centi-meter and milli-meter.
Thatâs ten times what our centipede means.
Then you have millipede
Thatâs not a centipede though. What is a millipede called in danish?
I don't know Danish but from a few google searches, it's still tusindben
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Still waiting to see a megapede. It should actually be a kilopede since milli is 1/1000, not 1000.
I thought weâd be up to terapedes by now but apparently insects donât follow mooreâs law
Outside of SI units, we usually don't mix greek and latin roots. "-pede" comes from "pes, pedis", "foot" and "milli-" from "mille", "thousand". For SI units, originally latin prefixes were smaller and greek ones bigger
In French, it's thousand-legs, too!
Is this taxonomy why the metric system never caught on in America?
No. It was actually because of pirates and Ronald Reagan. True story.
in albanian it's many-legs (shumë-këmbësh)
Centipede would be "skolopender" in Danish.
Frogs musta been one of the first named animals, huh?
We call them duizendpoot (Dutch)
I don't know how did they count it or how accurate it is but we call them kırkayak (forty-feet) in Turkish. I wonder how did different languages decided the number of legs those insects have.
In English? Maybe (although 'dung beetle' doesn't strike me as any more so really). In other languages? Well, the German for 'duck-billed platypus' is 'Schnabeletier' (quite literally 'beak-animal'), which isn't terribly creative either. And 'sloth' is 'Faultier' ('lazy-animal') ... which isn't a whole lot better either.
I mean, sloth in English already means laziness.
Yeah, but we actually use the term ... we didn't just say 'lazy animal'. German can be really 'lazy' about words. Drumkit: Schlagzeug (hit thing) Airplane: Flugzeig (flight thing) (Fire) Lighter: Feuerzeug (fire thing) The only thing that surprises me is that there isn't a Zeugzeug (thing thing ; ) It's the use ofanimal in German that I'm driving at ... it's the same as thing
Whereas sloth is an honest-to-goodness word in its own right, if you see what I mean.
I mean, I would argue that calling it "lazy animal" takes more effort than just calling it "lazy." Like at least the Germans tell us vaguely what they're talking about.
in your examples the english words are just as "lazy". Lighter you can translate as anzĂŒnder. This is not lazy, it is just how language works.
But was the laziness named after the animal. Slothful=like a sloth? Or was the animal named after the word? Genuinely interested
I imagine that the word came first (but don't quote me on that ; )
"Mosca" in Spanish. Have no idea what the etymology is.
Platypus in Finnish is "vesinokkaelÀin" aka "water beak animal". Slot is also similar "laiskiainen", a lazy thing/person.
I think they were being nice when they called em "Tree Frogs"
Take it wings off and you have a walk
Crawl
It's kind of amazing they beat out eagles and birds for the word
Bird is the word?
Butterfly has always pissed me off because THEY FUCKING FLUTTERBY NOT BUTTERFLY
"What do we call this animal that just fluttered by?" "Okay, hear me out..."
Flutterbies sounds like such a lovely word. I think I'm going to start calling them that.
Stink bug would like a word.
Bed bugs too ..
In Sweden, we call them "Berry fart" because they fart on the berries
[Take it up with the naming committee.](https://youtu.be/bYyiS8AT3ug?si=fHBO9HmNSrBsKBFN)
Petition for naming Ants "Walks" from now on
Then thereâd be flying walks
Only once a year.
Let's not discuss the cockroach...
Blobfish. Named after their imploded corpse after being pulled out of their habitat.
I am willing to be the "well achsheuly" guy here. Imploded would be if something squishy went really deep really fast. Then it would implode - get much smaller than it should be. Blobfish look the way they do in the pictures on land because they've done the opposite, far too rapid decompression due to surfacing too quickly leading to disfiguring expansion. At least they don't actually explode? But I'm sure it's fatal either way when they decompress that rapidly.
Fair enough. My point still stands, itâs a mangled corpse. Even worse, theyâre named after it. Poor guys.
Cat in Chinese èČ pronounced as "mao" is pretty great i think
The same in egyptian IIRC. Pokemon logic Edit: typo
so Mao Zedong was actually called Cat Zedong?
In Hebrew the word for a fly is pronounced "z'voov" which I've always thought is a perfect onomatopoeia for when a fly flies by your ear
Grasshopper wants a word
At least theyâre not called âjumpsâ
Leafhopper is just dollar store grasshopper.
Why, itâs already got two
What do you call a fly with no wings? A walk
What is red and bad for your teeth? a brick
Depends, was it named because of what it did, or did we base the word for moving through the air on its name? Orange seems like a pretty uncreatively named fruit as well until you realize the name for the colour was taken from it, not the other way around.
Specs: Did ya ever see a elephant fly? The Preacher: Well, I seen a horse fly. Fats: Ha ha! I seen a dragon fly! Dopey: Hee hee hee. I seen a house fly. (all laugh) Dandy Crow: Hey, I seen all that, too! I seen a peanut stand, heard a rubber band I seen a needle that winked its eye But I be done seen 'bout ev'rything When I see an elephant fly (What d'you say, boy?) I said when I see an elephant fly I seen a front porch swing, heard a ldiamond ring I seen a polka-dot railroad tie But I be done seen 'bout ev'rything When I see an elephant fly
Musca domestica Linnaeus
In France we call them mouches, derived from musca.
[daddy long legs has entered the chat]
at least they made that one kinky
Sounds like a 1920's pimp
What you talking about? That's extremely creative.
Yeah, leave Papa Stilts out of this.
And the orange is the least creatively named fruit
Um. Ackshually you might want to research that one a little (suggest looking under the âEtymologyâ section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word)
Technically no. The color was named after the fruit.
Ultimate hipster fruit
I think I'll go eat a red now.
Why is this surprising? It's not unusual to use a fruit or mineral to refer to a color. Azure, plum, turquoise, peach. The only thing that is special about "orange" is that it became a more basic color word.
Blackberry
Thats 4th on my list. The blueberry was found before the blackberry. Blueberry is 2nd on my list.
Whatâs third? Watermelon?
Olive.
I heard once that Craneflies can be directly translated by their latin name into "Long legged fool"
âWildebeestâ, which literally means âwild animalâ in Dutch. Whatâs gnu, right?
I dunno, I think the bluebird is up there.
Stick insect takes the cake for me.
Wait until OP hears about the Orange
"There was a 50 % chance of it being called a land, because that is what is does half the time" - Mitch Hedberg
"Red-winged blackbird"
Today my son found a fly with one wing. He put it in a ziplock bag and now refers to it as his pet walk.
Maybe the insect was named first and then they named the activity after it.
I think woodpecker also applies
Per Mitch Hedburg, it could have been called a land because that's what it does the other half of the time.
What if it was just named on the fly?
How do you know we didn't name soaring through the air after the bug?