Giraffe Facts: What's In a Name

-

© Barbara V. Evers,  All Rights Reserved
Until 1487, western cultures believed the giraffe existed as a mythical creature much like the unicorn. What happened in 1487?  A giraffe arrived in Florence, Italy.  Considering the travel limitations of the time, most of Europe didn't see a giraffe until several centuries later, so scientists grappled with what to call the animal.  It's anatomy sounded implausible.  In fact, for many years, based only on verbal descriptions, many referred to it as a cameleopard.

A cameleopard?  Descriptions defied the imagination.  Think about it:  very tall,  long neck, two-five horns on its head, spots,  sloped back, and hooves.  They took these points about the anatomy and decided it had spots like a leopard and the sloping back and hooves of a camel.  Boy did they miss the boat on that one.  In fact, today, we know the giraffe isn't related to the camel or the leopard.  It shares family taxonomy with only one other animal, the okapi, a smallish animal living in rainforests that wasn't discovered until 1901.

In 1826, the viceroy of Egypt sent the gift of a living giraffe to Paris to enhance relations between the two countries.  This giraffe walked to Paris.  What a journey!  Many people came out to see the animal on its long trek and now western civilization had proof of this fantastical creature.

Then where did the name giraffe come from?  It's more closely related to the names given it in its native lands such as gyraffa and zirafa.  The French word is girafe and in Italian it is giraffa.  According to Lynn  Sherr in her book, Tall Blondes, her favorite name for the giraffe is twiga, from the Swahili language.


By any name, the giraffe is a remarkable creature.There remains much we don't know, but the facts still fascinate me.

What animal, living or imaginary, fascinates you?  Why?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skin Tone: Describing Your Characters

-
Image
When you write about character's of different races, how do you describe their skin tone? If you've never thought about this, then consider this question: How do the authors you read described persons of color? A few months ago, I attended a webinar about writing diverse characters. The guest was Eliana West of Writers for Diversity . The information she shared felt fresh and valuable, especially related to describing a character's skin tone. I get really tired of seeing African-descended characters described in terms of the goods that drove, and still drive the slave trade--coffee, chocolate, brown sugar. There's some weird psychosocial baggage attached to that.    -- N. K. Jemisin As this quote from author, N. K . Jemisin , indicates, historically, writers have described people of color using food-related descriptors. Many people of color find this offensive. This surprised me, at first, but she has a point, especially when you view it through the quote above. My fir
Read more

Character Development: Using the Johari Window

-
Image
In my last post, Character Development: the Johari Window , I introduced the Johari Window as a tool for developing your characters. It's important that your character not know everything about their situation. These unknowns can lead to an intriguing story and create possibilities for conflict within the story. How do you use the Johari Window? In this post, I thought I'd provide a simple example of the Johari Window with a character most people know:  Harry Potter. Below, I have filled out the Johari Window as it might appear within the first few pages of book 1, Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone . The Johari Window based on Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone Three of the quadrants in this window reveal what Harry doesn't know about who he truly is and what happened to his parents. I could add a lot to the quadrants representing what he doesn't know, but I hope this gives you an idea on how a Johari Window might be used. What do you d
Read more

He Said, She Said, Who Said? Punctuating Dialogue

-
Image
Courtesy of Morguefile.com I've been focusing my posts on workshops and panels I taught or participated on at the Imaginarium Convention. Although this serves as a poor substitute for the real thing, I can share some highlights. This week, we're going to explore dialogue punctuation. The first thing writers need to learn is how to properly punctuate dialogue. I've discovered, over the years, that many don't know how. Notice in the first example below, the dialogue starts at the beginning of the sentence, and the speaking tag (he said, she said, Paul said, etc.) follows it.  A few points to notice: The first letter of the quotation is capitalized. What the person says is a sentence, so it must be capitalized. A comma comes directly after the quote and INSIDE the quotation marks. You can, also, have a question mark or exclamation point here. There is a space AFTER the closing quotation mark followed by the speaking tag and a period at the end of the sentence. In the next
Read more