this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
249 points (98.4% liked)

Map Enthusiasts

4129 readers
8 users here now

For the map enthused!

Rules:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

According to Wiktionary, this is the path the word took (from Latin into Polish at least):

elephantus (Latin, "elephant")

*ulbanduz (Proto-Germanic, "camel")

๐Œฟ๐Œป๐Œฑ๐Œฐ๐Œฝ๐Œณ๐Œฟ๐ƒ (Gothic, "camel")

*velัŒb(l)วซdัŠ (Proto-Slavic)

Wielbล‚ฤ…d (Polish)

[โ€“] Microw@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Poles got a germanic word when German didnt lol

[โ€“] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

East-Germanic languages, as e.g. the Gothic language, were spoken in todays Poland between the rivers Oder and Vistula and are a different (and extinct) branch of the Germanic languages than West-Germanic (German, Dutch, Frisian, English) or North-Germanic (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese).

[โ€“] Klear@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Oh god oh fuck. Shit.

This applies to Czech (velbloud) as well. The thing is, we already call hippos elephants. The Czech word "hroch" is related to the chess piece "rook" in English. What about the Czech name for elephant then? It's "slon" and it means lion.

[โ€“] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 days ago

The polish word for elephant is sล‚oล„, it's very similar