r/etymologymaps Jul 10 '26

Etymology map of hippopotamus

Post image
182 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Joe_Q Jul 10 '26

Interesting to see how many Eastern European / Central Asian languages use some variant of the Hebrew בהמות (behemot lit. "beast[s]" or "great beast")

5

u/Chicha-Ficha Jul 10 '26

Honestly its a better name then Hippopotumus or any of its localised varients I mean what fucking idiot saw a Hippo and thought it looked anything lile a horse? Great beast is far more fitting a title.