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[This is a guest post by Meme Master Mark (MMM), who says he's honored that I call him that:  "3M is also from Minnesota" (see the first sentence).]

Having spent many of my formative years in Minnesota, "crab raccoon" makes perfect sense.

This was a pretty disturbing tattoo:

And this one is sure to give you the heebie-jeebies:

[end of guest post; more than any other person I know, MMM is capable of speaking in memes, just as some people are highly proficient in emojis and emoticons]

pángxiè huànxióng / wǎnxióng / huǎnxióng

螃蟹浣熊

"crab raccoon"

For those who are curious about the etymology of the Chinese name for "raccoon", the two constituent morphemes mean "wash" ( from its custom of washing food before eating it) and "bear" (the zoologists and taxonomists can wrangle over that designation).

The Japanese follows the same logic, but not the same derivation:

araiguma

 あらひぐま / アライグマ / 洗熊

"raccoon" (lit., "wash bear")

Cf. German Waschbär ("washing bear") and French raton laveur ("washing rat")

As for the English word "raccoon", it has a quite different source and meaning:

Names for the species include the common raccoon, North American raccoon, and northern raccoon. In various North American native languages, the reference to the animal's manual dexterity, or use of its hands is the source for the names. The word raccoon was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term meaning 'animal that scratches with its hands', as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone. It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning '[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands'. The word is sometimes spelled as racoon.

In Spanish, the raccoon is called mapache, derived from the Nahuatl mapachtli of the Aztecs, meaning '[the] one who takes everything in its hands'.

Its Latin name literally means 'before-dog washer'.^[15] The genus Procyon was named by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr.^[

(Wikipedia)

I must confess that I consider the raccoon to be one of the most captivating animals on earth.  Although many of its attributes are attractive, two that are most beguiling and bewitching for me are its delicate (yet powerful) hands and its bandit mask, even more so than its banded tail.

Selected readings

• "Neoguri: raccoon or raccoon dog?" (7/11/14)
• "The pig(s) and the raccoon" (8/30/18
• "Crab raccoon" (9/1/24)

September 2, 2024 @ 12:09 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Classification, Emojis and emoticons, Language and biology, Memes

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