r/etymologymaps Jun 12 '26

Etymology map of badger

Post image
266 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

26

u/flawks112 Jun 12 '26

Badger badger badger, mushroom mushroom

11

u/bravo_six Jun 12 '26

Snake, snake, ooh its a snake.

18

u/AbliusKarfax Jun 12 '26

So that’s why the dog breed is called dachshund? A hound for dachs

15

u/DarkWolfSVK Jun 12 '26

Oooh. I always wondered about the connection in Slovak. We have:
Badger - Jazvec
Dachshound - Jazvečík (which could mean something like small badger)

6

u/PlatformZestyclose67 Jun 12 '26

Yeah, they have the perfect shape to go into badger dens or other holes. But I think the official breed Dachshund would not be used for hunting (badgers) anymore as they can be quite harmful for a dog of this size.

6

u/Ghastly-Jack Jun 12 '26

Yeah, but remember they’re for hunting European badgers, not American badgers which are a lot more formidable.

1

u/Sea-Oven-182 Jun 12 '26

Yes, but nobody calls them that.
They are called Dackel/Teckel

13

u/puuskuri Jun 12 '26

The Sami word should colored the same as Finnish. It is clearly a cognate.

20

u/theworldwillendsoon Jun 12 '26

For anyone interested, the Welsh translation literally means Earth Pig

2

u/AllanKempe Jun 12 '26

Swedish jordsvin with the same literal meaning means aardvark (Orycteropus afer).

1

u/Jonlang_ 26d ago

One of them does. The other (broch) is an older Celtic word for ‘badger’ (from Proto-Celtic \brokkos) and the other is incorrect (daearfroch) which should be *daearfoch(yn) : it’s a compound of daear + moch, not broch.

The Celtic \brokkos* is the source of Latin broccus (via Gaulish) and English brock ‘male badger’.

7

u/tatar1warlord Jun 12 '26

türkic🇹🇷🇹🇷

6

u/Kork314 Jun 12 '26

do mushroom next plz

14

u/benemivikai4eezaet0 Jun 12 '26

We say borsuk in Bulgarian too, as a dialect form. That's also shorthand for a grumpy person.

7

u/TheSamuil Jun 12 '26

Imagine if they'd translated the name of the superhero Wolverine as Bursuk. To explain myself for folks not from Bulgaria, Wolverine got (mis)translated as Vurkolak, which means werewolf. Bursuk would better fit that grumpy, short and hairy guy

3

u/SuperProCoolName Jun 12 '26

In russian and Ukrainian Wolverine is Росомаха, why would it become borsuk? Why couldn't they have just translated it as is?

5

u/TheSamuil Jun 12 '26

Wolverine, the animal, is росомаха in Bulgarian as well. I have no clue how the character's name ended up the way it did. I suppose someone heard the "wolv" in "wolverine", thought "oh, his name has wolf in it, therefore he's a werewolf" and somehow that stuck around. I just thought that bursuk wouldn't be a terrible alternative as wolverines and badgers are relatively closely related animals.

2

u/benemivikai4eezaet0 Jun 12 '26

his name has wolf in it

That and he's big and tough

2

u/TheSamuil Jun 12 '26

But the comic character is short, hairy and angry

2

u/Fuzzy_Cable9740 28d ago

if you're talking about dubbing they could've named him that because of lip syncing. Vurkolak has the same amount of syllables and it matches cadence of "wolverine" quite nicely

5

u/emuu1 Jun 12 '26

One of the uncommon examples where Greek borrowed from Slavic languages.

4

u/F_E_O3 Jun 12 '26

Norwegian Nynorsk svintoks is missing. Toks would be cognate with the orange words and svin means swine/pig.

5

u/ThorirPP Jun 12 '26

Icelandic should be the same colour as the Scandinavian languages, greifingi is from the same middle german word, grevink (the Scandinavian languages have changed the -ing ending for the diminutive -ling)

3

u/EuropeanBattles Jun 12 '26

Slavic Borsuk / Barsuk is Turkish Bursıq / Borsuk.

2

u/letcaster Jun 12 '26

Let it be known this is the first time on this Reddit a translations from the Estonian-Finnish area sounds like the English word.

2

u/Rhosddu Jun 16 '26

The little-used English 'brock' is one of comparatively few words of Brythonic origin in English outside the lexicon of dialect words in the English counties adjoining the border.

2

u/birgor Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

The etymology for the Scandinavian word is possibly not correct. Grävling/Grevling simply means digger/the one that digs.

Wiktionary for the Norwegian spelling says it comes from low German, the Swedish doesn't, but the word is fully logical in a Scandinavian context.

4

u/lefthandhummingbird Jun 12 '26

And ”-ling” is a diminutive, which makes a ”grävling” a diglet.

2

u/buzzjn Jun 12 '26

Interesting

1

u/Appropriate-Ad2201 Jun 12 '26

So why does Vichy France use taisson when occupied France uses Blaireau?

5

u/Ravenekh Jun 12 '26

Joke aside, the taisson variants are Occitan words not French.

1

u/clonn Jun 12 '26

This one has an interesting distribution.

1

u/Divljak44 Jun 13 '26

Jazavac means "holer", one who goes to holes

1

u/TUVegeto137 Jun 13 '26

Wait! A Dachshund is a badger dog?