What's in a Name?

Grevy's Zebra | Klipspringer | Felis leo roosevelti | Bustards | Emus

Grevy's Zebra

Europeans first saw Grevy's zebras in the Roman coliseum, where they were called hippotigris (hippo is from the Greek for horse and tigris refers to tiger-like stripes). Subsequently, they were lost from European view until 1882, when the emperor of Abyssinia sent a live one to the then-president of France, Jules Grévy. The animal died on arrival, however, and was stuffed and displayed in the Paris natural history museum. Based on its skin, a French scientist declared it a new species and named it Equus grevyi in Grévy's honor. Equus is Latin for horse, and is the genus name of all living species of horses, zebras, and asses. The word zebra may be derived from zecora, these animals' name in Galla, a language of Ethiopia, or from the Congolese word zebra.

Another species of zebra, Burchell's (or plains) zebra—Equus burchelli—was named for its British discoverer, William John Burchell. Little known today, Burchell was a great explorer of Africa. He spent five years (1810-1815) in southern Africa during which he traveled more than 4,300 miles. He described many new species, including white rhinos, and collected more than 63,000 specimens of plants and animals, a large number new to science. He donated many of his specimens to the British Museum and then fell out with the museum authorities when some of the specimens were damaged. Reportedly, this fight led John Edward Gray, a museum keeper, to dub the zebra Asinus (from the Latin for ass and fool) burchelli when he described it scientifically. Its genus name was later revised to Equus.

—Susan Lumpkin

From the November/December 2004 issue of ZooGoer

Klipspringer

For most of us, oreo means a cream-filled chocolate sandwich. But in the scientific name of the klipspringer, Oreotragus oreotragus, the prefix "oreo" refers to a hill or mountain, from the Greek ore. The second syllable means goat, also from the Greek, providing a pretty good visual image of this diminutive African mammal. The common name, an Afrikaaner word meaning rock-springer, adds behavior to the picture.

The klipspringer lives high on rocky crags and outcrops, moving on this steep and treacherous terrain with a stiff, spring-y gait, and standing with all four feet together to gain purchase on the smallest of level rocks. Not really a goat, the klipspringer is a member of a group of African ungulates called dwarf antelope.

Numbering only about 12 species that occupy diverse habitats from dense forest to semi-arid scrub, dwarf antelope range in size from the 4.5-pound royal antelope to the 45-pound beira. The klipspringer weighs in at between 22 and 33 pounds and stands just 17 to 20 inches at the shoulder. Living in small family groups, klipspringers are widely distributed in Africa south of the Sahara.

ZooGoer 28(1) 1999. Copyright 1999 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved

Felis leo roosevelti

From the Kennedy Space Center and Hoover Dam, to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington, D.C., we've named all sorts of things after our presidents. Perhaps the most unusual example of a presidential namesake is Felis leo roosevelti, a subspecies of lion named in 1913 to honor Teddy Roosevelt.

Known as the conservation president, Roosevelt provided federal protection for nearly 230 million acres of American land. He was also an avid naturalist and big game hunter, spending time on safari in Africa collecting animals for American museums.

In 1904, Emperor Menelik of Abysinnia (now Ethiopia) presented Roosevelt with a gift: an adult male lion with a black-tipped mane. Thought to be a new subspecies, it was dubbed Felis leo roosevelti and brought here to the National Zoo, where it remained a popular attraction until its death in November 1906. The lion's body was then sent to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where it remains today. Though modern scientists no longer consider Roosevelt's lion to be a true subspecies and the species’ official name is now Panthera leo our 26th president's name does still honor another famous "animal," the teddy bear.

—Laura Zajac

ZooGoer 29(5) 2000. Copyright 2000 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.

Bustards

No less a scholar than the Roman historian Pliny gave bustards their original Latin name, avis tarda, meaning "slow bird." The Latin designation eventually fledged into abetarda in Portuguese, ottarda in Italian, bistarde in old French, and finally "bustard" in English.

Pliny chose the name because Spaniards, he had heard, described these birds as tarda, or slow. Pliny's translation, however, might not fly. Rather than denoting tardiness, the old Spanish tarda, linguists speculate, may instead share the same origins as the name for bustard in German, Trappe, as well as our English words "tread" and "traipse." With powerful legs, bustards are anything but slow, and male bustards do traipse about haughtily when trying to impress prospective mates.

Sadly, the great bustard (scientific name: Otis tarda), which was so common in Pliny's time, has become a rara avis—a rare bird.

—Alex Hawes

ZooGoer 31(2) 2002. Copyright 2002 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.

Emus

Emus are the Australian grassland equivalent to African ostriches and South American rheas. The ratite group includes such flightless birds as the ostrich, emu, rhea, and kiwi. "Ratite" comes from the Latin word, ratita, a flat-bottomed boat (without a keel). Birds that fly have a large bony plate on their sternum, called a keel, to which their flight muscles attach. The flightless ratites all lack this feature, and are hence "keelless."

While for most birds flight is the primary means of quick escape, ratites run to avoid danger. The emus scientific name, Dromaius novaehollandiae, takes note of this fact, as "dromaios" is Greek for "running" or "swift of foot." Meanwhile, "novaehollandiae" is the latinate form of New Holland, the name used during the 17th and 18th centuries to refer to the northeastern sections of Australia where the emu lives.

The word "emu" itself is believed to have originated from one of two sources: the call of the male, which can sound like "eeemoo" or as a corrupted form of the Portuguese word for the rhea, "ema." The strong resemblance between rheas and emus may have caused some confusion between their names.

Nowadays, an "EMU" can also be an electromagnetic unit, an extravehicular mobility unit, Eastern Michigan University, or European Monetary Union.

Sarah Flaherty and Alex Hawes

ZooGoer 28(6) 1999. Copyright 1999 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.

 

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