Nat Baca

Nat Baca

I'm interested in everything.

About

By day, I'm a Director of Engineering at the Wikimedia Foundation. By night, I'm a host of Nerd Nite Albuquerque. I've worked for Apple, Spotify, the White House, and more. I like to read, write, and code.

Posts tagged animals

Bring back the diminutive -ga suffix
Published

Can we bring back the diminutive “-ga” suffix?

-ga, Old English-
Diminutive suffix, used especially in familiar names for pets.
docga ― dog
frocga ― frog
*picga ― pig
*snecga ― snail
stacga ― stag
wicga ― insect

-ga - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Dragonfly in Welsh: gwas y neidr
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For when the Tiger King needs a cargo liner
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Seen while shopping for dog cargo liners. I guess the Tiger King needs to transport his animals too🤷

A product listing photo of a black quilted cargo liner installed in an SUV trunk, with a full-grown tiger sitting calmly on top of it.

The raccoon is a wash bear
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TIL: The raccoon, to a surprising number of quite disparate world languages, is the “wash bear”, derived from its habit of appearing to wash its food.

A table of the word for raccoon in nine languages — German Waschbär, Dutch wasbeer, Swedish tvättbjörn, Danish and Norwegian vaskebjørn, Chinese 浣熊, Japanese 洗熊, Estonian pesukaru, Finnish pesukarhu — every one of them literally meaning “wash bear”.

A list continuing the raccoon etymologies: Polish szop pracz (“washer raccoon”), Russian енот-полоскун (“rinsing raccoon”), and Ukrainian єнот-полоскун, the same idea.

Related: The real names of animals!

Pickles the dog and the stolen World Cup
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The original World Cup trophy was stolen (!!) twice (!!) & recovered by a dog (!!) — named Pickles (!!) — who received a silver medal, became a cult hero, and went on to star in movies and tv shows, including The Spy with a Cold Nose. He was named dog of the year.

Pickles (dog) - Wikipedia

There's a precedent for this
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Theres a precedent for this!

Wikipedia app screenshot of the article “Commonplace book”, beside a photograph of a page from a 17th-century handwritten notebook.

Wikipedia app screenshot of the article “Bowerbird”, describing how males decorate their bowers with hundreds of collected objects, beside a photo of a glossy blue-black satin bowerbird.