Who Named the Animals?

By Daniel Taverne

I’d like to know how the animals of the world were named, and who named them! It seems to me that logic should have played an important role in the naming, but after thinking about it for a while I became convinced there is no rhyme or reason in their names what so ever.

First I considered maybe choosing a name was based on the animals size. For instance, dog, cat, and pig are all built low to the ground, hence their 3 letter, single syllable labels. Then I thought of the cow, possum and armadillo. Since cows aren’t built low to the ground, and since possums and armadillos (which contain more than one syllable) are, I determined this reasoning to be flawed.

Then I thought perhaps animals with higher intelligence have longer more complicated names. Soon after my daughter’s boyfriend visited, I realized I was mistaken because although ‘man’ can be highly intelligent, his intelligence is not a given.

So, I wish someone would tell me how the names of our animal friends were chosen. Did some guy go around with a list of names assigning them at random? Consider the names of some of the 3 letter animals: bat, cat, cow, rat, dog and yak. Doesn’t it sound like an infant named these animals?

In college, I was taught that this form of speech is called pre-speech, and that it’s regularly spoken by 2 and 3 year old children. So, how about it? Is a Child the source of these three letter name animals? Maybe this child was the “namer’s” child who blurted out these sounds while pointing at drawings of various animals. What ever the reasons, and who ever named them, it’s amazing how in most cases the names seem to fit.

There are times however when I think other labels for some animals would fit much better. If I were naming animals, for example, pigs would be called bacon and cows would be called steaks. Cats would be called sneaks, and dogs would be called lickers.

If I were to name animals, zebras would be called convicts, and giraffes would be called stretch horses. I’d call chickens buckers and kids would be called pains.

Although my chosen animal names make perfect sense to me, they’d likely be confusing, and lacking in logic to others. This realization only serves to point out what I already knew: as long as we are all in agreement regarding there names, it doesn’t really matter who named them or why.