• Question: how did we comeup with names for different animals like elephant and everything

    Asked by littlemissknowitall to Douglas, Hugh, Matt, Tom on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Douglas Blane

      Douglas Blane answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Names for most things in English come from other languages because Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and French all brought different languages and helped to form the modern English we know.

      ‘Hippopotamus’ for instance comes from two Greek words that mean horse and river. So a hippopotomus is a “river horse”.

      ‘Elephant’ is from an ancient Greek word ‘elephas’, which means ivory

      There’s quite a nice article that tells you more about animal names here: http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/how-did-animals-get-their-names

    • Photo: Matthew Hurley

      Matthew Hurley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I think that these name orignate from the first descriptions of what these animals looked like either to the locals who spoke in local languages or to the explorers who spoke in latin, greek etc. All our languages stem from these.

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