Funny and bizarre German animal names
The German language is famous for some really long nouns
(Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän comes to mind). This is
because German nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives are like lego
bricks; you can stick them together in almost any way to create new
words that encapsulate new concepts. This gives the language a special
ability to name just about anything.
You could call it the German
language’s lego brick-like quality, or
Legosteineigenschaft (see what I
just did there?).
But why does German rely on such an elaborate process to name things
as simple as squirrels? When broken down into their separate components,
the names of familiar animals mutate into bizarre new creatures.
The Uncanny X-Tiere
Comics are full of heroes with names like
super, wonder, iron, ultra, bat or
cat followed by
-man, -woman, -girl or
-boy. A lot of German animal names work the same way, where
Tier – the word for animal – is preceded by a word describing that animal’s “super power”.
-
Stinktier – stink animal (skunk)
-
Faultier – lazy animal (sloth)
-
Gürteltier – belt animal (armadillo)
-
Murmeltier – mumbling animal (groundhog)
-
Schnabeltier – beak animal (platypus)
-
Maultier – mouth animal (mule)
-
Trampeltier – trampling animal (bactrian camel).
The verb trampeln means to trample or tread upon, whereas the noun Trampel is a clumsy oaf.
Sometimes suffixes get more specific than -tier, but still tend to describe the wrong animal:
-
Schildkröte – shield toad (tortoise)
-
Waschbär – wash bear (raccoon)
-
Nacktschnecke – naked snail (slug)
-
Fledermaus – flutter mouse (bat)
-
Seehund – sea dog (seal)
-
Tintenfisch – ink fish (squid)
-
Truthahn – threatening chicken (turkey).
Trut is onomatopoeic for the
trut-trut-trut cluck of a turkey, but it’s also been hypothesized that
the name comes from the Middle German droten which means “to threaten”.
No, I’m Pretty Sure That’s A Pig
Swine seem to be a popular yardstick in German animal taxonomy.
-
Schweinswal – pig whale (porpoise)
-
Seeschwein – sea pig (dugong).
Not to be confused with the Seekuh, or sea cow, known in English as a manatee.
-
Stachelschwein – spike pig (porcupine).
The English word is actually just as literal; porcupine sounds a lot like “pork spine”.
-
Wasserschwein – water pig (capybara)
-
Meerschweinchen – ocean piglet (guinea pig).
The ending -chen denotes something small. Add it to the end of Schwein and you get a little pig, or piglet. Since the stems Meer and Wasser are often interchangeable, it’s most likely that Meerschweinchen actually means little capybara.
Just Plain Weird
I’d like to end this list by giving one animal a category all to itself: the humble
squirrel.
Eichhörnchen:
- little oak horn: Eiche (oak tree) + Horn (horn) + -chen (little)
- oak croissant: Eiche (oak tree) + Hörnchen (croissant)
alternate names:
- Eichkätzchen (regional name) and Eichkatzerl (Austria) – oak kitten
Calling a squirrel a “tree kitten” is reasonably literal, but where
does “little oak horn” come from? It seems that the answer comes down to
a misplaced
h:
Eichhörnchen comes from the Old and Middle German
eichorn, which has nothing to do with oak trees or horns. In this case, the
eich comes from the ancient Indo-Germanic word
aig, which means agitated movement, combined with the now obsolete suffix
-orn. Somewhere in history a superfluous
h was added (along with the diminutive
-chen
ending) but the original meaning remained. Today, Hörnchen is a
category of rodents that includes all squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs,
prairie dogs and flying squirrels.
Keep an eye on this spot for an upcoming post where we’ll delve
deeper into the animal kingdom: branching out to birds, insects,
reptiles, fishes and any other mammals we find crawling around.
