An animal epithet is a name used to label a person or group, by association with some perceived quality of an
animal
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
.
Epithet
An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...
s may be formulated as
simile
A simile () is a figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes differ from other metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than", while other metaphors cr ...
s, explicitly comparing people with the named animal, as in "he is as sly as a fox", or as
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
s, directly naming people as animals, as in "he is a
lyfox". Animal epithets may be
pejorative
A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...
, of negative character, or positive, indicating praise.
Animal similes and metaphors have been used since classical times, for example by
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
and
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
, to heighten effects in literature, and to sum up complex concepts concisely.
Surnames that name animals are found in different countries. They may be
metonym
Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.
Etymology
The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name' ...
ic, naming a person's profession, generally in the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
;
toponym
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
ic, naming the place where a person lived; or
nickname
A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
s, comparing the person favourably or otherwise with the named animal.
History
![Mnesterophonia Louvre CA7124](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Mnesterophonia_Louvre_CA7124.jpg)
In the cultures of
ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
and
ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...
, animal stereotypes grew until by the time of
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
, animal epithets could be applied to anything from an abstract concept like love or fear, to a whole civilisation. An author could use an animal's name to emphasise a theme or to provide an overview of a complex epic tale. For example,
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
uses animal similes in the ''
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
'' and the ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'', where the lion symbolises qualities such as bravery. This leads up to the lion
simile
A simile () is a figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes differ from other metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than", while other metaphors cr ...
at the end of the ''Odyssey'', where in Book 22
Odysseus
Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...
kills all Penelope's suitors. In the ''Iliad'', Homer compares the
Trojans
Trojan or Trojans may refer to:
* Of or from the ancient city of Troy
* Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans
Arts and entertainment Music
* ''Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 1890 ...
to
stridulating
Stridulation is the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts. This behavior is mostly associated with insects, but other animals are known to do this as well, such as a number of species of fish, snakes and spiders. The mech ...
grasshopper
Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago.
Grasshopp ...
s, which the classicist Gordon Lindsay Campbell believes to imply that they make a lot of noise but are weaker and less determined than they think. In the ''
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...
'', Book 4, Virgil compares the world of
Dido
Dido ( ; , ), also known as Elissa ( , ), was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage (located in modern Tunisia), in 814 BC.
In most accounts, she was the queen of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre (t ...
, queen of
Carthage
Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...
, with a colony of
ant
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...
s. Campbell argues that Dido's people are hardworking, strong, unfailingly loyal, organised, and self-regulating: just the sort of world that the hero Aeneas would like to create. But, Campbell argues, the simile also suggests that Carthage's civilisation is fragile and insignificant, and could readily be destroyed.
Insults
Pejorative, politics
Animal epithets may be
pejorative
A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...
, indeed in some cultures highly offensive.
Epithets are sometimes used in political campaigns; in 1890, the trades unionist
Chummy Fleming
John William 'Chummy' Fleming (1863 – 25 January 1950) was a pioneer unionist, agitator for the unemployed, and anarchist in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
"Chummy" Fleming was instrumental in starting May Day celebrations and marches in Mel ...
marched with a group of unemployed people through the streets of Melbourne, displaying a banner with the message "Feed on our flesh and blood you capitalist
hyena
Hyenas, or hyaenas (from Ancient Greek , ), are feliform carnivoran mammals of the family Hyaenidae . With only four extant species (each in its own genus), it is the fifth-smallest family in the Carnivora and one of the smallest in the clas ...
s: it is your funeral feast".
On the other side of the ideological divide, the Cuban government described the revolutionary
Che Guevara
Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted ...
as a "communist
rat
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus ''Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' ( pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoot ...
" in 1958.
Epithets are not limited to mammals; for instance, comparing someone to a
snail
A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastro ...
means they are (extremely) slow, while calling them a
slug
Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a smal ...
implies they are lazy and loathsome. Frog is pejorative for French people in English, from the use of frogs' legs in French cuisine.
Taboos
Edmund Leach argued in a classic 1964 paper that animal epithets are insulting when the animal in question is
taboo
A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
, making its name suitable for use as an obscenity. For example, Leach argues that calling a person "a son of a bitch" or "you swine" means that the "animal name itself is credited with potency".
In 1976, John Halverson argued that Leach's argument about taboos was "specious", and his "categorisation of animals in terms of 'social distance' and edibility is inconsistent in itself and corresponds neither to reality nor to the scheme of social distance and human sexuality it is claimed to parallel". Halverson disputed the association of animal epithets with potency, noting that calling a timid person a mouse, or a person who does not face reality an ostrich, or a silly person a goose, does not mean that these names are potent, taboo, or sacred.
Timothy Jay argues, citing Leach, that the use of animal epithets as insults is partly down to taboos on eating pets or unfamiliar wild animals, and partly down to our stereotypes of animals' habits, such as that
pigs in popular culture
Pigs, widespread in societies around the world since neolithic times, have been used for many purposes in art, literature, and other expressions of human culture. In classical times, the Romans considered pork the finest of meats, enjoying sausa ...
"are dirty, fat, and eat filth". Jay further cites
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
's view that obscenities that name animals, such as cow, cock, dog, pig, and bitch, gain their power by reducing people to animals.
Metaphors and similes
The use of metaphors from zoology, such as referring to politicians as rats or hyenas, is what the linguistic researcher Aida Sakalauskaite calls "zoometaphors"
and Grzegorz A. Kleparski calls "zoosemy", the use of
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
s from
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...
. In each of three different languages, English, German, and Lithuanian, the most common animal categories are farmyard animals (40% in English),
Canidae
Canidae (; from Latin, ''canis'', "dog") is a biological family of dog-like carnivorans, colloquially referred to as dogs, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a canid (). There are three subfamilies found within th ...
(including dog and wolf, 6% in English), and birds (10% in English). Grammatically, metaphor, as in "sly fox", is not the only option: speakers may also use
simile
A simile () is a figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes differ from other metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than", while other metaphors cr ...
, as in "deaf as an ass". In German, 92% of animal epithets are metaphors, 8% similes, whereas in English, 53% are similes, 47% metaphors.
[
The Hungarian linguists Katalin Balogné Bérces and Zsuzsa Szamosfalvi found in a preliminary survey of Serbian usage that the most commonly used "animal vocatives" were, in order, 1. pig, 2. chick(en), 3. dog/puppy, 4. cow, 5. monkey, 6. hen, 7. rat, 8. turkey, 9. mouse, 10. snake, 11. cat/kitten, 12. fox, 13. lamb, 14. vixen, 15. worm. Of these, using the classification devised by Sabina Halupka-Resetar, and Biljana Radic, lamb was always used positively; cow and vixen referred to a person's appearance; pig indicated a person's eating habits; calling someone a fox or a turkey related to their intelligence, or lack of it; and names like cat, snake, worm, monkey, dog, mouse, chicken, lamb and rat were used to indicate a person's character.]
Surnames
Some English surnames from the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
name animals. These have different origins. Some, like Pigg (1066), Hogg (1079) and Hoggard, Hogarth (1279) are metonym
Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.
Etymology
The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name' ...
s for a swineherd, while Oxer (1327) similarly denotes an oxherd and Shepherd
A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. ''Shepherd'' derives from Old English ''sceaphierde (''sceap'' 'sheep' + ''hierde'' 'herder'). ''Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations, i ...
(1279 onwards; also Shepard, Sheppard, etc.) means as it sounds a herder of sheep.
Surnames that mention animals can also be toponym
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
ic, the names Horscroft, Horsfall, Horsley and Horstead for example all denoting people who came from these villages associated with horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...
s. The surname Horseman (1226 onwards) on the other hand is a metonym for a rider, mounted warrior, or horse-dealer, while the surnames Horse and Horsnail could either be nicknames or metonyms for workers with horses and shoers of horses respectively.
Some surnames, like Bird, dating from 1193 onwards, with variants like Byrd and Bride, are most likely nickname
A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
s for a bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
like person, though they may also be metonyms for a birdcatcher; but Birdwood is toponymic, for a person who lived by a wood full of birds. Eagle
Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...
from 1230 is a nickname from the bird, while Weasel
Weasels are mammals of the genus ''Mustela'' of the family Mustelidae. The genus ''Mustela'' includes the least weasels, polecats, stoats, ferrets and European mink. Members of this genus are small, active predators, with long and slender bo ...
, Wessel from 1193 and Stag
Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...
g from 1198 are certainly nicknames from those animals. It is not always easy to tell whether a nickname was friendly, humorous or negative, but the surname Stallion
A stallion is a male horse that has not been gelded (castrated).
Stallions follow the conformation and phenotype of their breed, but within that standard, the presence of hormones such as testosterone may give stallions a thicker, "cresty" nec ...
, with variants Stallan, Stallen and Stallon, (1202 onwards) is certainly pejorative, meaning "a begetter, a man of lascivious life".
Surnames behave in similar ways in other languages; for example in France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, surnames can be toponymic, metonymic, or may record nicknames ("sobriquets"). Poisson (meaning fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...
) is a metonym for a fishmonger or fisherman. Loiseau (The bird) and Lechat (The cat) are nicknames, Lechat indicating either a flexible man or a hypocrite, Loiseau suggesting a lightly-built birdlike person. In Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
, the surname Falk (Falcon
Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.
Adult falcons ...
) is common; it is found among Swedish nobility from 1399.
See also
* Plant epithet
A plant epithet is a name used to label a person or group, by association with some perceived quality of a plant. Vegetable epithets may be pejorative, such as turnip, readily giving offence, or positive, such as rose or other flowers implying b ...
References
Sources
* {{cite book , last1=Reaney , first1=P. H. , last2=Wilson , first2=R. M. , title=A Dictionary of English Surnames , date=1997 , publisher=Oxford University Press , isbn=0-198-60092-5 , url-access=registration , url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofengl0000rean
Animals in popular culture
Metaphors referring to animals
Pejorative terms for people
Biology and culture
Onomastics