“Bunny” was originally “squirrel,” and “squirrel” was originally … “shadow tail”?!
Current events, or at least as they overflow in our newsfeed troughs these days, can feel like a zoo. And lately, literally so, with animal appellations ranging the headlines:
- Frogs, especially inflatable frog costumes, have become an unlikely but striking symbol of opposition to the Trump administration
- Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny faced racist backlash after being selected for the Super Bowl halftime show
- Scientists concluded the beloved Chicago “rat hole” sidewalk imprint was almost certainly formed by a squirrel
- The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Seattle Mariners to advance to their first World Series in over three decades
This week, the etymological meets the zoological on Mashed Radish.
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Frog etymology
Frog comes from the Old English frogga or frocga.
Its ranine roots are ultimately related to the Old English frosc, pronounced like frosh.
Frosc has many friends in the Germanic language pond, such as the German name for the amphibian: Frosch.
The Germanic etymological tadpole, if you will, could be the Proto-Indo-European *preu, “to hop.”
This hypothetical root may have also spawned the Dutch-derived frolic and the second element of German’s schadenfreude.
Now there’s three words I wouldn’t have suspected share a linguistic lilypad.
Old English frosch was likely altered to frogga by association with docga, meaning and source of “dog”—and whose further origin is one the great unknowns in our tongue.
We do know that dog and frog form a little farm of familiar fauna along with hog, pig, stag, and even earwig and teg, a sheep or deer in its second year.
You may observe these fellas all end in g.
Their historical forms, like frogga, displayed what is known as gemination—that is, doubled consonants, which historically lengthened pronunciation.
Why? One leading explanation is that this –gg– was a hypocoristic form—a way of giving pet names.
And curiously, the form appears—or survives in—the names for these particular critters.
(Longtime Radish Mashers may recall I wrote at length on the subject of this dog word pack for Oxford Dictionaries in 2016, but alas, the post is no longer live.)
Bunny etymology
Speaking of pet names, bunny is a pet name for a rabbit. And speaking of hopping for that matter…
Bunny is so far first recorded surprisingly late: in 1699. Earlier in the century, we see bunny used as a pet name for women and children.
Bunny is a diminutive of bun, a dialect term first for squirrel (1580s) and only later for rabbit (1840s).
The deeper roots of bun are obscure. One theory connects it to the Scottish bun, “bottom, butt, base,” likely for the “tail of the hare.”
Let’s leap over to some over leporine lexemes:
- Rabbit is attested in the late 1300s, possibly from a Middle French form that may have been rabotte, a diminutive based on the Middle Dutch robbe
- The word was originally used for young rabbits, adults being called the coneys, French via Latin cunīculus (another diminutive)
- Coney has died out in English, but it may survive in name Coney Island, whence the Coney Island hot dog, or coney for short
Go further down the etymological rabbit hole with my deep dive on the history and origin of rabbit from the archives.
Squirrel etymology
Bunny was originally squirrel, and squirrel was originally … “shadow tail”?!
Yes, shadow tail. At least as one tempting interpretation has it.
Evidenced by the 1360s, the word squirrel has done some serious scurrying across the lexical branches, etymologically speaking.
It comes into English from the French esquirrel, based on the Vulgar Latin scuriolus, a diminutive of a variant of the Latin sciūrus, in turn from the Greek skíorous (σκίουρος).
The Greek skíorous is thought—though it may just be folk etymology—to be composed of skiá (σκιά, “shadow”) and ourá (οὐρά, “tail”).
And so we have more butts: via a common Proto-Indo-European root for “buttocks,” the Greek ourá is related to the English arse.
The ourobouros, a circular symbol of a snake eating its own tail, also features ourá. The –boruros part is Greek for “eating.”
Skiá hides in more obscurity in English, appearing in technical terms like sciaphilous (a plant that “loves shade”).
The Old English name for squirrel was ácweorna—and that first element, ác-, may be from the Old English ác, meaning and source of “oak.”
Jay etymology
The blue jay is a common North American jay known for its blue feathers. Its name is attested in the early 1700s.
Jay is found in the 1350s, from the Old French jai and the Latin gaius before it. Like a lot of bird names, the Latin gaius is probably imitative of the bird’s notorious screech.
The Latin given name Gaius may have influenced the ancient word, but any further semantic associations seem tenuous at best.
The bird’s noisiness, along with its showy plumage and aggressive behavior, variously lent jay as a slang term, including by the late 1800s for a “simpleton” or “novice.”
This is the sense of jay—as “rube”—that alights in the term jaywalking.
People have chattered like jaybirds on specious origins of the term, but it traces back to the early 1900s in Kansas.
Jaywalker originally referred to people who disrupted the sidewalk flow before it jumped over into crossing into street traffic.
It is based on the slightly older jay-driver, which decried people who drove on the wrong side of the road.
Mashed Radish 
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