Some animals have earned some silly names that are in common use in English. I thought maybe as a community we could pool our knowledge and see what ones we know or what your favorite ones are. My two favorites are: Business Goose ===> Penguin (actually from Chinese 企鹅, but has been adopted by m…

Re: Fireflies…they are also called lightning bugs, which is a pretty fanciful name

I don’t know how widely this is used, but a sparrow or something similar, moving too fast for a precise observation, is a “Small Brown Job”.

I’d always heard it as LBB (Little Brown Bird). Same difference.

I know someone who calls Alpine choughs “Pommes Geier” which is German and means literally “French fries vulture.” This person pretends that Alpine choughs steal food especially French fries.

LBJ, Little Brown Job and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

When I went to Switzerland, we looked up Alpine choughs because my mum is a massive corvid fan. The information we found stated that tourists were a major source of food for choughs - presumably the tourists’ lunches, not that the choughs are know to eat tourists.

I love how that sounds out loud!!

This is the way I know it too. Also Lady Bird I suppose.

well, mariquita, ladybird in spanish (Coleóptera: Coccinellidae) literally is the diminutive for marica, or sissy in Spanish lol, but in Chile, ladybird are chinitas, the diminutive for a female chineses

Silly names that are actually in use for animals

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Silly names that are actually in use for animals

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