Bat Fact Friday: What’s in a Name

Bats, as I’ve said before (and a fact that few people who know me are able to ignore), are among my all-time favourite critters. It’s a bit of a weird duality really, because I fell in love with them for their “spooky” nature, but soon learned that their sinister reputation really is completely unearned.

There’s a lot of amazing work being done in sanctuaries around the world to protect and preserve bats, and to educate people about how awesome they are. But there’s still a good deal of misunderstanding and suspicion around bats out there as well. I’m constantly surprised by the new and fascinating things I keep finding out about these beauties, and the more I learn, the more I love them.

Because it’s not widely socially accepted to be That Person Who Rattles Off Bat Facts At Parties, I thought the blog would be a good place to post the occasional bit of cool bat trivia.

Why are bats called bats?

The general consensus is that the modern English name dates back to the Old Norse name leðrblaka – literally translating to “leather-flapper” – as well as the Old Swedish natbakka and the Old Danish nathbakkæ, meaning “night-flapper”. Eventually the name evolved into the Middle English bakke or balke, and was also perhaps associated with the Medieval Latin batta.

On that subject, thank you to Reddit’s etymology sub for this awesome map, which explores the origins of the name “bat” in multiple languages. My favourites have got to be “Little Evening One” and “Butterfly of the Night”.

That covers European languages, but what about further East? The Chinese name for bat is fu (written as 蝠) which sounds identical to the Chinese word for luck, written as 福 and also pronounced as fu. This similarity means that bats are often seen as a symbol of good fortune in Chinese culture. A group of five bats together represents the concept of “Five Blessings” (wufu), namely longevity, prosperity, health, love of virtue/ morality, and a peaceful death.

In Japanese, the word for bat is Kōmori, which may have originated from the word Kawamori (“protecting rivers”), from Kawahari, (“skin stretched between bones”), or possibly from Kawahori (“eating mosquitoes”). Less common names are tenso and hiso (meaning “sky mouse” and “flying mouse”).

In southern Africa, the Xhosa and the Zulu word for bat is ilulwane, although some sources say that the word in Zulu can also refer to a silly person (I’m just guessing here, but maybe that’s similar to how we would call someone “batty” or “an old bat” in English?). In Afrikaans, which is derived from Dutch, the word is vlermuis (again meaning “flying mouse”).

Oh no you rho-don’t

When it comes to names, there’s a recurring theme of “flying mice” or “winged rats” – which is understandable, given the appearance of some bat species – but bats are not in fact rodents, or related to rodents at all. They’re a unique type of animal, in that they’re the only mammal we know of with the power of true flight. And they’re classified in a group of their very own: Chiroptera (meaning “hand-wing”).

The Chiroptera order is divided into two suborders: megabats or megachiroptera (also known as Old World fruit bats), and microbats or microchiroptera (also called true bats). The difference between megabats and microbats is a whole post in itself – so for now I’ll leave my first Bat Fact Friday at that, with some (hopefully) interesting info on how bats came to be known as, well, bats.

If you’re curious about bat conservation and why it’s important, check out Bat World Sanctuary, an awesome US-based organisation looking to end the misunderstanding and mistreatment of these amazing creatures. Their Facebook page also has loads of interesting info, conservation news and a huge “awww” factor!

Wishing you a flappy Friday,

The Ghoul Next Door

Photo by shellandshilo on Pixabay