![\"Butterfly\"](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/photos\/butterfly.jpg\")
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Last night we were talking about the Pili Palas<\/a> on Anglesey, a butterfly centre, which also has birds, snakes and other exotic creatures. The name is a pun combining pili-pala<\/em> (butterfly) and palas<\/em> (palace) – it took me ages to realise this. We were trying to think of the words for butterfly in various other languages and came up with the French, papillon<\/em>, and the Spanish mariposa<\/em>, but got stuck after that. This got me wondering why these words are so different in different languages.<\/p>\n The English word butterfly comes from the Old English buttorfleoge<\/em>, perhaps from b\u0113atan<\/em> (to beat) and fl\u0113oge<\/em> (fly), or perhaps it was the name just for yellow butterflies, and\/or because butterflies were thought to eat butter and milk. <\/p>\n In Middle High German butterflies were known as molkendiep<\/em> (“milk-thief”) and in Low German a butterfly is a Botterlicker<\/em> (“butter-licker”) [source<\/a>]. In Modern German Schmetterling<\/em> \/\u02c8\u0283m\u025bt\u0250l\u026a\u014b\/ is the word for butterfly – from Schmetten<\/em> (cream) – from the Czech smetana<\/em> (cream). This is based on the folk belief that witches transformed themselves into butterflies to steal cream and milk [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n Welsh words for butterfly include i\u00e2r fach yr haf<\/em> (“summer chick”), gl\u00f6yn byw<\/em> (“living coal”), pila-pala<\/em> and bili-balo<\/em>. <\/p>\n Like i\u00e2r fach yr haf<\/em> in Welsh, butterflies are known as “summer birds” in Norwegian, sommerfugl<\/em>, and in Yiddish, zomerfeygele<\/em>.<\/p>\n In Irish the word for butterfly is f\u00e9ileac\u00e1n<\/em>, possible from the Old Irish etelach\u00e1n<\/em> (little flying creature \/ butterfly), from etelach<\/em> (flying) [source<\/a>]. The Manx butterfly, foillycan<\/em>, comes from the same root, but in Scottish Gaelic butterflies are seilleann-d\u00e9<\/em> (“God’s bee”) and dealan-d\u00e8<\/em> (“God’s lightening”).<\/p>\n The French word for butterfly, papillon<\/em>, comes from the Latin p\u0101pili\u014d<\/em> (butterfly, moth) – of unknown origin, and also the root of the English word pavilion (via Old French) [source<\/a>]. The Italian farfalla<\/em> (butterfly) comes from the same source.<\/p>\n The Spanish word for butterfly, mariposa<\/em>, apparently comes from the expression Mari, posa(te<\/em> (Mary, alight!), which features in children’s songs and games, or from la Santa Maria posa<\/em> (the Virgin Mary alights\/rests). Other theories about the etymology of this word<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is more discussion of words for butterfly in various languages on AllExperts<\/a>, and there are words for butterfly in many more languages here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night we were talking about the Pili Palas on Anglesey, a butterfly centre, which also has birds, snakes and other exotic creatures. The name is a pun combining pili-pala (butterfly) and palas (palace) – it took me ages to realise this. We were trying to think of the words for butterfly in various other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,116,127,128,10,15,23,56,64,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-german","category-irish","category-italian","category-language","category-latin","category-manx","category-scottish-gaelic","category-spanish","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}