Not a lot of people stop to ponder where names come from these days, unless they run across some idiot with a name Xerxes, Jermajesty or Dane Cook. Even less noteworthy are the names of animals, which we all tend to take for granted. But as it turns out, a number of our little friends were named by people even stupider than the average celebrity with a newborn.

Gorilla – Proving that stupidity and racism have gone hand in hand for years, the name gorilla comes from the translation of a Carthaginians account of his travels through Africa in the 5^th century BC. He claimed a tribe of very hairy people from West Africa were known as gorillas and, in 1847, an American missionary decided it was a fine name for the ape we all know today. He then went on to drink a mint julep and twirl his mustaches before dying cold and alone.

Skunk – Because Europeans who settled in North America had language skills on par with the average middle class white kid of today, they couldn’t quite manage the native languages at the time. Thus, when early settlers stumbled upon this stench spewing little bastard, and the local Algonquins called it “seganku” or “he who squirts,” which is the same name they gave Cousin Gary, someone just decided skunk was easier to say and the rest of the Imperialist world agreed.

Leopard – Ancient biology wasn’t quite the science it is nowadays and was apparently peopled entirely with individuals who had no imagination at all. Thus, when someone first saw a leopard the original thought was to name it after both a lion (leo) and a panther (pard), as they figured those two animals are probably where this animal came from and thinking up a whole new name would have left them weak and sleepy. Back in those days there were only 17 animals to choose from, and everything else was some kind of combination thereof, which is why for a long while, giraffes were known as “camelopards” and Pat Sajak was known as “doucherat.”

Hippopotamus – The Greeks are responsible for a lot of the words we use today in English and that’s just how it is. Which means we have to accept that some idiot Greek traveler came across these portly, deadly bastards wading through a puddle and thought to himself “Oh look, some kind of river horse.” The fact that it looks as much like a horse as it does like John Madden in a wading pool means nothing, as the Greeks didn’t want any Maddenpotamuses roaming about and now we’ll never get to enjoy them.

Dingo – Few animals have as much irony in their names as the dingo whose name means “tame dog” to the natives yet the white folks who settled there thought it was a fine label for the wild dog that is infamous for occasionally eating babies, in a somewhat stark contrast to what most people consider tame. Rumor has it that the guy who named the dingo was later killed by his second discovery, the Likes-To-Be-Poked Fish, later renamed the tiger shark.

Lemur – Your average animal like a horse or a cow can trace its name back through about a hundred and one dead languages and get lost somewhere in history. Lemurs, on the other hand, were named by a zoologist in the late 1700’s who felt the Latin lemures or “spirits of the dead” summed the lemur up perfectly, because they looked creepy to him, what with their hilarious jumping and long tails. His attempt to name pandas “Sodomite Devil Spawns” was rejected.

Cardinal – This bright red bird shares its name with some kind of holy person in the Catholic Church. It’s like a little league Pope. And they too dress in red, so the question became who was named first? It was the little league Popes, after which someone saw the bird, saw it was red and figured cardinal was a good enough name, thus allowing it to join the ranks of other brilliantly named birds like “blue bird” and “woodpecker,” both named by the same mouth breathing inbred who named the orange.

Bear – This one could have been good if the bears of the world would have cooperated. Germanic for “the brown one” we assume bears probably got confused with all manner of things; mud, shit, fudge and the tongues of highly sought after hookers. Early linguistics were confusing indeed. Toss in things like black bears, which would essentially mean “black brown ones” and the name becomes about as useless as a chocolate teapot, which we hear is pretty useless.

Raccoon – Not to dump on the Native peoples again, but when their ancestors got around to naming animals their tendency to be horribly literal with whatever circumstance was present when they first saw the animal is very apparent. Hence, the raccoon got saddled with a moniker derived from the Algonquin arahkunem, which means “he who scratches with the hands,” a name so open in its interpretation it could apply to half the world’s tow truck drivers, plumbers and that guy in the apartment down the hall who stinks like old cheddar. In retrospect, the raccoons of the world can be happy they weren’t taking a shit when they were first discovered.

Turkey – If you ever wondered which was named first, the bird or the country, wonder no more. As it happens, the fat, ugly birds were pretty impressive to Spanish Conquistadors back when they were raping and pillaging the land of the Aztecs, so they brought some home. They were spread through Europe by way of Northern Africa, which was part of the Ottoman Empire and thus very much associated with Turkey, the country. When the birds made their way to the English speaking world, the dullards at the time simply called it turkey, since that’s where it came from as far as they knew and the Turkish folks, to compound the stupidity, called it hindi, meaning “Indian” because they too didn’t have a fucking clue where the damn bird came from. The French name dinde still holds today, from its origins in poulet d’inde, or chicken of India, proving being a complete idiot can cross many cultures and languages.

Cougar – Another sadly misnamed animal, the cougar derives its name from a couple of words that, put together and translated, mean something like “false deer” or “resembling a deer,” both of which indicate the cougar was discovered by an extremely near-sighted hunter who may have had to crawl home on bloody stumps while screaming about the asshole deer that nearly killed him.

Parakeet – Because birds and the church just seem to go together, no matter how stupid the reason, the parakeet traces its name to parrocchetto, or little priest, an association having something to do with its head plumage and not because the birds were known to touch children. This also goes to show how much the church has changed as apparently, back in the day, priests dressed like drag queens with colorful, feathered headdresses.

Weasel – Another animal likely not entirely proud of its name origins and exemplary of the uncreative early peoples who first discovered it. The weasel takes its name from “stinking animal,” something which just wouldn’t work in the modern world as it would have to be equally applied to any number of hippies, transients and filthy European gigolos, not to mention pretty much every other animal besides a weasel. We can only assume the weasel was named very early on in the history of animal naming, sometime after the discovery of the Axe Body Spray Hound and the Rose-Assed monkey.