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How did birds get their names?

Updated: 10/9/2023
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14y ago

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Many common birds have had their names for hundreds of years and the origin of these names may be uncertain.

Lots of birds have names derived from the calls that they make, for example, Crow, Rook, Killdeer, Knot, ...

Birds discovered more recently are named by their discoverers or by national or international bird authorities.

There are several complete lists of birds of the world with no general agreement on names. Some birds have different names in different countries.

There is not even complete agreement about which birds are separate species and which are races or subspecies!

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14y ago
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10y ago

The English word cat (Old English catt) is in origin a loanword, introduced to many languages of Europe from Latin cattus[14] and Byzantine Greek κάττα, including Portuguese and Spanish gato, French chat, German Katze, Lithuanian katė and Old Church Slavonic kotka, among others.[15] The ultimate source of the word is Afroasiatic, presumably from Late Egyptian čaute,[16] the feminine of čaus "wildcat". The word was introduced, together with the domestic animal itself, to the Roman Republic by the 1st century BCE.[citation needed] An alternative word with cognates in many languages is English puss(pussycat). Attested only from the 16th century, it may have been introduced from Dutch poes or from Low German puuskatte, related to Swedish kattepus, or Norwegian pus, pusekatt. Similar forms exist in Lithuanian puižė and Irish puisín. The etymology of this word is unknown, but it may have simply arisen from a sound used to attract a cat.[17][18]

A group of cats is referred to as a "clowder" or a "glaring",[19] a male cat is called a "tom" or "tomcat"[20] (or a "gib",[21] if neutered), a female is called a "molly"[citation needed] or (especially among breeders) a "queen",[22] and a pre-pubescent juvenile is referred to as a "kitten". The male progenitor of a cat, especially a pedigreed cat, is its "sire",[23] and its female progenitor is its "dam".[24] In Early Modern English, the word kitten was interchangeable with the now-obsolete word catling.[25]

A pedigreed cat is one whose ancestry is recorded by a cat fancier organization. A purebred cat is one whose ancestry contains only individuals of the same breed. Many pedigreed and especially purebred cats are exhibited as show cats. Cats of unrecorded, mixed ancestry are referred to as domestic short-haired or domestic long-haired cats, by coat type, or commonly as random-bred, moggies (chiefly British), or (using terms borrowed from dog breeding) mongrels or mutt-cats.

While the African wildcat is the ancestral subspecies from which domestic cats are descended, there are several intermediate stages between domestic pet and pedigree cats on the one hand and those entirely wild animals on the other. The semi-feral cat is a mostly outdoor cat that is not owned by any one individual, but is generally friendly to people and may be fed by several households. Feral cats are associated with human habitation areas and may be fed by people or forage in rubbish, but are wary of human interaction

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13y ago

The person's name "Cat" generally is an abridgement of Catherine.

The animal name "cat" comes from the Latin word cattus.

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12y ago

Cat names may come from the color of their fur to their body size or personality. Cat names can also tell us a lot about their owners too.

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