I just learned that the Russian word for “ladybug” translates to “God’s Little Cow”
It’s the same in Irish! bóín Dé!
in hebrew it’s “our rabbi moses’s cow”
Oh I love this news!!!!
Multiple cultures upon seeing a ladybug for the first time: “Who’s cow is this????”
It feels like some early humans were naming things and one of them ran out of ideas.
Human 1: (points at animal) What’s that?
Human 2: Cow.
Human 1: (points at bug) What’s that?
Human 2: … little cow.
Human 1: But it’s so much smaller. Who would have use for such a small cow?
Human 2: (panicking but in too deep to stop now) God.
The “Lady” in the name “ladybug” is the virgin Mary. People just cannot stop giving religious names to this bug.
The reason for this was that if you lived in an agrarian society then your survival was a throw of the dice every year, depending on the success of the crops. A failed crop year is a very hard year where deaths are expected. And if you grew a cereal like wheat, there were several things that could cause your crops to fail, but one of the big ones was if you happened to get a fuckton of aphids. You know what eats aphids? Ladybugs! If there are lots and lots of ladybugs around, there was a good chance that it’d be a good crop year! They were little crop protectors! When your family lives or dies on the success of that crop, of course they’d be seen as a blessing and given an appropriate name!
That is such an interesting etymology!!!!
And entomology too i guess
in German they’re Marienkäfer which also pretty much means “Mary’s Beetle”
In French it’s “Good Lord’s Beast”
Not even a cow, it’s just a little Creature but we know for sure God loves it.
In Dutch it’s “Lieveheersbeestje”, the Good Lord’s Little Beast
A liddol creeture
welp guess we’re outliers cuz in Czech they’re called “little sun” but apparently in some dialects they’re also called god’s cow, sheep or chicken :)
