English–Swedish–French–Latin Animal Word List

This list can be used by anyone who needs to find animal names in the above languages.

Key

Words or letters within / / can be left out, e.g. ‘cotton­tail /rabbit/’, ‘pussy /cat/’. Usually one slash (/) denotes a variant, e.g. ‘green wood­pigeon/woodpecker’, where / can be read as ‘or’. <= developed from (e.g. from a Latin word).

Abbreviations

AE=American English, Danish, English, French, Greek, Ho=Dutch, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Ry=Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Sverige (Sweden), Ty=German, adjective, dialect/al/, diminutive, jmf=cf=compare, koll=col­lective, plural, N.G.=National Geo­graphic Magaz­ine, VK=Väster­bottens-Kuriren (a local newspaper), S.N. Sveriges Natur (a maga­zine published by “Natur­skydds­för­eningen” = The En­viron­mental Pro­tec­tion So­ciety). Asterisk (*) denotes endangered spe­cies, esp. in Swe­den, accor­ding to the “Red List” 2005- 05-11, published by The Swe­dish Na­tional Environ­ment Pro­tection Board (see “Sources”: Natur­vårds­verkets ‘Röd­lista’). A new list will be published in 2010. N.G. 1995/3 contains pictures and sil­houettes of 632 en­dangered species in the USA. N.G. 1995/9 con­tains “Hawaii’s Lost World”, ex­tinct or en­dangered spe­cies. N.G. 1999/2 is almost com­pletely devoted to “Bio­diver­sity”. See also S.N. 1994/4 about en­dangered fish spe­cies and P.A. Morris (1993): A Red Data Book for British Mam­mals, The Mam­mal So­ciety, Lon­don. You can also find Red Lists on the Inter­net, e.g. “Lista Rossa degli Uccelli d’Italia” = “Red List of Italian Birds”. This one is very use­ful and con­tains many beauti­ful photos: “The IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species”. A new list was published in 2011. More about threat­ened species: www.arkive.org/ (A mar­vel­lous site!!!)

Pronunciation

(English words:) Words which are often difficult for Non-Eng­lish Speakers are some­times ex­plained in phone­tic spel­ling, al­ways with­in brack­ets, [ ]. Often only the main accent is denoted. [--'-] means that the third syl­lable is stres­sed.
  Names which are the same in all three modern languages are usually not included, e.g. many dog species. As regards dogs, see Ame­rican Ken­nel Club’s site. Click on Breeds. There you will find many, many breeds with photos and infor­mation. A very good Swedish site of the same kind is Aktivhund.se Here is a compre­hensive French site: Chiens­De­Race.com. Here are cat breeds galore: Wiki­pedia: List of cat breeds Wiki­pedia: Lista över katt­raser and in French: Royal Canin Horse breeds: Wik­ipedia: Lista över hästraser and Wiki­pedia: List of horse_breed and in French: Fer à cheval and Lexique du cheval. Cattle breeds will be found in Wiki­pedia: Lista över nöt­kreaturs­raser and Wiki­pedia: List of breeds of cattle and Wiki­pedia: Liste des races bovines. Okla­homa State Univer­sity has a site where you can find sheep, goat and swine breeds besides horses and cattle already mentioned.
 Some animals have several different names (dialectal or regional), and some names can denote several dif­ferent animals. Besides animal names there are also terms con­nected with animals (e.g. E ‘ento­mopha­gous’) and there are many etymological or other linguistic com­men­taries.
 Baby animal names, see: Zoo­borns

The list, which comprises more than 3,000 species, is of course far from com­plete as there are at least 2 mil­lion dif­ferent animal species, 30 million accor­ding to cer­tain scien­tists. The num­ber of in­sect spe­cies is con­sidered to be at least 1.5 million; in Sweden 18,000 spec­ies have been de­scribed. N.G. 1999/2, page 22, con­tains up-to-date figures. According to En­cyclo­pedia of Life (EOL) there are 1.8 million spe­cies (of plants and animals) named and described.
  Consequently my selec­tion must be some­what arbi­trary, but I have tried to include as many common (=well-known) animals as pos­sible, esp. Swedish or Scandi­navian. European mam­mals are very well repre­sented thanks to Brink’s book “Alla Europas dägg­djur” (All Europe’s Mammals), where the names are given in Latin, Swedish, Danish, Nor­wegian, Finnish, English, French and German. Kai Curry-Lindahl’s “Afrikas dägg­djur” is another fresh source. In it the names are given in Swedish, Latin, English, French and sometimes in Swahili or other African languages. Animal Diver­sity Web edited by The Univer­sity of Michi­gan Museum of Zoo­logy con­tains most of the world’s Mam­mals, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes and Other Verte­brates, chiefly in English and Latin. Try it!
  North American Ma­mmals is also very inte­resting.
  Here is a mamma­lian lexicon where you can find Latin and Greek words explained in English: A Mammalian Lexicon
  More than 4,850 mammals + 10,000 subspecies will be found on the follo­wing site, which contains ‘anything’ you wish to know: Planet’ Mammi­fères There are two versions, one in English and one in French. Well worth many visits!
  There are many birds, most of them from the Western European fauna. Cramp & Perrin’s “Hand­book of the Birds of Europe...” has been a real “gold mine” for me. In those nine volumes the names are given in Latin, English, Dutch, French, German, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. And the pic­tures are exquisite! More birds: “Avibase” is mar­vel­lous. Another great site is Oiseaux.net. I was astounded by the amount of infor­mation and all the pic­tures (which can all be enlarged). Try it!
  Another book which gives a lot of infor­mation to a person who is interested in languages is Svens­son’s “Identi­fication Guide...”. Michael Walter’s “The Complete Birds...” fills up with all imaginable bird names in English and Latin. Yet another book with several languages (English, Latin, German, Dutch, French and Swedish) is “A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe” by Peterson-Mountfort-Hollom. (See Sources!)
  On the Internet there are many sites with animal names, mostly in English and Latin, but French, German, and Swedish can also be found. “The Multi­lingual Bird-search Engine” has bird names in 18 dif­ferent languages! Try also: Birds of Den­mark. A wonder­ful site! Here is an inte­resting site: The Birds of North America Online. Here you will find 222 dif­ferent owls: The Owl Pages
  As regards the butter­flies , most of the names are from “Europas fjärilar” by Higgins & Riley. Among ab 380 butter­flies described I have mainly chosen those which are to be found in Scandi­navia. The follo­wing site contains a lot of infor­mation and pictures of butter­flies: Butter­fly WebSite See also Imagine­butter­flies.dk and Parnassius of the World. (Butterflies galore!) In “Svärmare och spinnare i Europa och Nordafrika” (Hawk moths and Spinning moths in Europe and North Africa), by Rougeot & Viette, the names are given in Swedish, Latin, English, German, and French. About bumblebees: see Google images Bombus. Lots of beautiful photos!

A book that has been very useful to me is Gozmány’s “Seven-Language Thesaurus of European Animals”. (See Sources!) Try Biopix where you will find lots of biological pictures and names of species in 8 different languages. A marvel­lous “site” is Fish­Base . Lots of fish photos! I have added some site addresses. Normally you can mark a name and use Google or other search engines to get more infor­mation. Wiki­pedia usually gives names in many languages.

Apart from the Animal Word List there is a list of Mam­mal Orders and Families and a list of Bird Families. Moreover, there is a Latin/Greek–Swedish Word List con­taining a selec­tion of words you will find in animal names, and some ana­tomi­cal terms.

For (possible) flaws and short­comings I apolo­gize.

P.O. Jacobson

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© P.O. Jacobson, Umeå. (Updated July 2012)

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