(Ecureuil à Central Park, originally uploaded by Architectural Orphans.)I found this Flickr photo — titled “Ecureuil à Central Park” — and I realized I knew the Spanish word for squirrel, too: la ardilla. (I should know it, since I live in Mexico, but still…). And that got me thinking: What’s the word for squirrel in other languages? I found this great old-school Angel Fire page…even though it’s totally circa 1994 in terms of web design, it’s a great resource. Some of my faves from the list:
- Ku’uk is Yucatec for squirrel. (If you know any Mayan words, you know almost all of them sound like “ku’uk.)
- Ekorre is Swedish, and it sorta means “oak kitten.”
- Esquilo is Portuguese, and it sorta means “shadow tail.”
- kAtHbIraI is Bengalese, and it sorta means “cat in a tree.”
- Klingon is qon’Het’wa. (Hmmm.)
- The Basque have two names for squirrel — urtxintxa and katagorri — and it means…starting drum roll….my favorite: “walnut otter.”… cymbals crashing.
I also wonder, and this would take enormous amounts of research, if other language use “squirrel” as a verb, as in to “squirrel away something.”
Hmmm. Anyone know?
In India, in the language Tamil, we call squirrel as Anil and in the language Hindi, we call squirrel as gilahri
In Bengali, it’s called “Kath Birali”!
In Hungarian squirrel is mókus.