October 15, 2025 • 44 mins
Since time immemorial, we've given animals names, from the sublime to the utterly ridiculous. For everyone who’s looked at a puppy or a kitten and wondered what it should be called – and then called it an embarrassingly silly nickname anyway – this episode is for you. This week, Danièle speaks with Ben Parsons about what medieval people named their pets and working animals, how we know about them, and which animals are still called by their medieval nicknames.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred eleven of
the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host Danielle Sebalski. In the beginning,
so the story goes, humans were given dominion over the animals,
(00:24):
and pretty much the first thing we started doing was
giving them names, from the sublime to the utterly ridiculous.
For everyone who's looked at a puppy or a kitten
and wondered what it should be called and then called
it an embarrassingly silly nickname. Anyway, this episode is for you.
This week I spoke with doctor Ben Parsons about medieval
(00:45):
animal names. Ben is Associate professor at the University of
Leicester and the author of Punishment and Medieval Education and
two Middle English prayer cycles. His new book is Introducing
Medieval Animal Names. Our cover on what people named their
pets and working animals, how we know about them, and
which animals are still called by their medieval nicknames is
(01:08):
coming up right after this. Well, welcome Ben to talk
about animal names. This is so exciting and I love
the book so much, so welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
No, thank you for having me down The answer as
a real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, I need to ask you where do you find
animal names in the Middle Ages, because some of the
sources you found were pretty interesting. Yeah, I think this
is the first question, like if you don't hear people
calling for their pets, where do you find.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, I mean it's a difficult one to kind of
answer in a short way. I mean there was a
period where it felt like I couldn't look anywhere without
bumping into one, almost by accident. I mean, even my
kind of tangential reading that I was doing for sort
of fun, like reading. I'd never read Procopius's Secret History before,
so I thought, I'll give that a look, and then
there's a name of a whale sort of pops up.
(02:00):
What's the end of their I was reading size Seanaguan's
pillow Books. I didn't know anything about Japan in the
kind of the turn of the eleventh century, and you know,
within the first few pages as the name of a
dog and a cat sort of pops out. So it's
I think it's like you know the bar of Minehoft syndrome,
where once you're conscious of something, it's suddenly everywhere, and
it just seemed to be that's what happened, you know.
(02:22):
They are kind of odd everyday details, so we tend
to kind of overlook in texts, and the more that
I became aware of them, the more they sort of
just jumped out at me, and I was able to
rather quickly sort of compile quite a big informal database
of them. So, look, I suppose might be the kind
of unsystematic serendipity.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean some of them you're mentioning
things like literature. People mentioned them as well, but you
found you found names in wills too, and we were
talking about wills not too long ago on the podcast.
So what kind of creatures appear in wills that end
up named?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, well, the ones that are kind of left and
named in will and similar kind of documents do tend
to be only a fairly kind of narrow I guess
what we call demographic. It only tends to be horses
or at bests, as the odd sheep pops up in
the sort of Pyrenees, and a few wills there as well.
But typically they do tend to be kind of high
value animals like horses. Rather, I've not once found a
(03:18):
dog name in a will, which is kind of quite
interesting when I mean dogs were not transferred other livestock
does get mentioned but not named, and that's the sort
of interesting kind of distinction I had to wrestle with
as well, why they're these anonymous creatures, whereas when horses
do appear in wills, they typically do have their names
attached to them. Yeah, the will names there again, it's
(03:39):
kind of it's sort of I suppose exemplifies one of
the kind of patterns I found running through the way
the animal names are presented in the period, the fact
that the records are always kind of transparent or neutral,
that there is a kind of selection process going on
at work, even in the sort of hidden choices that
are made about which names are preserved and where they're preserved,
And often the kind of discourse in which an animal
(04:02):
name appears is big influence on the way that name
is used and whether it's preserved at all. So yeah,
it's been an overly complex simple question.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
No, no, no, I mean, I'm asking these questions because
trying to find these things can be really difficult, and
so I'm always interested in the way that you find them.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Especially.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
One aspect of this that maybe hadn't occurred to me
before now is that I'm always interested in what the source.
And I think that comes from, you know, all the
training that we do and all the critical thinking that
we do. So yeah, I'm always interested in where do
we find this? Are we just picking it up, you know,
out of thin air? And obviously this isn't what you're doing,
So I'm always interested. Don't worry about the answer being long.
(04:49):
So when we're looking at animal names, you went all
the way back to the ancient period to start digging.
Why did you go there if you were going to
be looking at the Middle Ages?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Well, yeah, I mean I just kind of ended up
getting drawn backwards. I suppose. I think it was again
what we're just talking about, that kind of awareness that
the records themselves have a kind of agency that you know,
records are not just impersonal facts. They are created by
human beings for human reasons. And part of that when
we're dealing with medieval sources is the fact that everyone,
(05:22):
more or less everyone that's kind of writing these sources
will have gone through a certain pattern of training, which
will in turn of involved being immersed in classical models
and classical sources. So I was very aware that, particularly
as you say, when I'm dealing with literary sources. I mean,
Christopher Canon's wrote written about this kind of quite brilliantly
in his work as well, the fact that you know
(05:43):
that classical stuff is just part of the sort of
undergrowth of medieval literary culture that we can't really escape it.
So I was aware I need to kind of go
back to that, and that proved quite useful as well,
because it showed that there were certain classical myths and
frameworks that were obviously very useful for medieval people when
thinking about and recording their engagements with animals. An example
(06:03):
would be Ovid's myth of Acteon, the hunter that's turned
into a deer by Diana when he barges in on
her bathing and sees her naked and is torn apart
by his own hounds. And in Ovid and Hyginus, this
has used as a kind of excuse to give this
great long list of the different kind of names of
hounds and medieval authors and early modern authors when they're
(06:23):
translating this story or adapting the story. He took it
as a kind of golden opportunity to just pop out
Greek ified Roman names and pop in their own sort
of French or English versions. So we get kind of
long lists of contemporary English names model on that, and
even when they're not direct translating that story, it's an
obvious kind of sort of inspiration for a lot of
writers as well, for again giving lists of dog names.
(06:46):
So again I was aware that you can't really overlook
that's just part of the kind of furniture of medieval writing.
So I need to go back to those Greek models
and see how much they sort of informed the way
that medieval people were referring to animals in which they
refer to them, in the motives for referring to them,
in naming them as well. And then I just kind
of got caught in the current and I'm drifting back
(07:06):
to Egypt and the earliest names there. They appear in
various inscriptions and topics.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So when you were looking at Egyptian sources, sort of tangentially,
you found there was like a pink dog collar that
had a pet name on it. Like that's incredible. Imagine
being the archaeologist who have found that that's Increa.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yes, it's in the I mean it's one of the
royal tombs, I suppose, so it may be a very
unremarkable find in the context of various chaviti and golden
statues and the other stuff that the paris under take
with them. But as far as I'm concerned, the most
valuable thing that you would find it that, Yeah, as
you say, an actual color with an inscription of a
name on it is an extraordinary thing, particularly because the
(07:49):
medieval colors that we have Leeds Castle Museum and other
sources don't have names on at all. At best, they'll
have their owner's name or some kind of vague inscription
relating to the fact of ownership or the owner themselves.
But yeah, the idea of recording an animal's name on
a color just seems to have dropped out of old
conception until at least the kind of Victorian period.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I think that in itself is interesting. So what else
did you find about the way that the ancients named animals,
so not just pets, but animals in general. What did
you find as sort of trends.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, again, it's I'm kind of like the mercy of
the sources and what the sources want to tell me.
I suppose one of the things that was particularly kind
of interesting when comparing the ancient world to the Middle Ages,
which is how much the usages to which animals were
put sort of informs whether their names are recorded or not. Again,
this is sort of Toynbee's work I was drawing on here.
There's a lot of mosaics from the ruins of amphitheaters
(08:48):
and other performance spaces which record the names of animals
used in staged hunts that as a kind of parallel
to gladiatorial combat. So we have things like the name
of a seal called that you eloy, which means beautiful
ship or something like that. I think, various kind of
lion names and leopard names as well, like flammothfare or
I think a spear carrier, that sort of thing. There's
(09:11):
a bull appears in one of these called Homicider or
the murder the bull, which is a terrific name. But
of course these are not names that you tend to
find in the Middle Ages, because the Middle Ages did
not carry out these types of blood spots. So again
it shows that there is this kind of weird filter
going on underneath the cultures that we're talking about, which
determine what names get recorded, whether they get recorded. And
(09:33):
one of the kind of big factors in that is
whether the animals are useful or not, and the ways
in which they're useful. Obviously, you know, ancient Rome had
a very bloodthirsty sort of usage of these types of animals,
which meant their names did get written down in some form,
whereas the Middle Ages didn't have those uses, so you know,
no names are attached to those animals and they don't
come down. So I suppose that was kind of one
(09:55):
of the starkest thing comparing the two periods that the
ancient world, you know, the kind of really drove home
that point that usage is very key in determining what
makes it into the documents in the first place.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, I've found that really stuck out in the book
as well, where you have these animals that are fighting,
and of course you'd need to have a name for
them so that they can be promoted, so that people
could come and see their fights and things like that.
But that was something that again maybe not having studied
ancient Romas and depth, I hadn't thought about either. But
of course then they need to have a name. That
(10:29):
is how the person makes money off these animals. Okay,
so if we move into the Middle Ages, one of
the things that you said in the book is this
is kind of what we're getting at already. Naming is
inseparable from evaluation. So what do you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, I mean you can, honestly, and the way we
use animal names today, I think I mean you take
your kind of average dog name, whatever you call your dog,
whether it be Archie or Keith or I don't know,
or something traditionless like Rover or Fido, which is perhaps
a bit kind of old hat now. But it's not
really a name. I mean, it's not a name in
the way that a human being carries a name. You know.
(11:05):
A dog's name is an instruction, a command. The dog
is not aware that its name is a kind of
foundation of its identity. It doesn't have that level of
psychological or onto logical attachment to the name. It's not
the core of its being in the way a human's
name is. The dog doesn't have that. It may have
a kind of consciousness of the certain sound pattern, which
(11:28):
means that it has to come to its master or mistress,
but that doesn't get integration into the dog's sense of
self in the same way it does with ours, at
least you know, as far as we know. And so
I think that's the kind of idea. I was playing
with the idea that animal names are really commands and instructions.
They are an attempt by us to try it in
some way govern or project onto the kind of animal world,
(11:51):
And of course the judgment and the desiderata that we
are projecting onto that world are our own as human beings,
So they tell us a lot more about our sense
of the animal world and our ambitions and projects of
the animal world than they do about the animal world itself.
These names are kind of human constructions that are then
(12:13):
superimposed onto animals. They're not arising out of the animal
world that we're latching onto. So yes, they're very much
names that say a lot more about the human sense
of the animal world than they do about the world itself.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Well, and one of the things that you talk about
sort of related to this is that the utility of
the animal is reflected in the name. So let's stick
with dogs for a minute, because you said that there's
different categories of dogs and this really has an effect
on how they are names. So tell us about how
people conceptualize dogs, because it's not just all dogs are
pets and working dogs. Different things that they did right
(12:50):
the way.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That we divide up dogs by breed is very much
anachronistic when we think about the Middle Ages. I mean,
it's only really in the early part of the nineteenth
century things breed takes over as the main way of
thinking about different types of dogs, you know, the different
way of classifying them and ranking them. In the Middle Ages,
it's all about the usage to which the dog is put.
(13:11):
There's some very eloquent passages on this sort of and
the best one is probably from Gower's Vox Clemantis or
the Visio Anglia, kind of early section of that, where
he describes the thirteen to eighty one passant revolt or
thirteen to eighty one uprising as a kind of animal allegory,
and there's a depiction of all the different dogs casting
off their owner's influence, shedding their chains and their leashes
(13:33):
and their collars, and joining in this rioters. And he
doesn't talk about breed. He talks about the miller's dog.
You talk about the baker's dog. He talks about the
watch dog, the hound, the hunting hound. So it's very
much divided up in terms of what function the dog
performs for a human being rather than its biology. Or
its genealogy. Even so, again it's very kind of clear
(13:54):
and nicely laid out, and I mean, that's not surprising
information from the Middle Ages, So I suppose what is
surprising is kind of how deep that goes, and the
fact that it does seem to have some influence on
the types of name that the dogs are receiving, so
they've kind of got porous boundaries a bit these classifications.
There are certain names that travel between types of dog.
(14:15):
Jackie seems to be kind of quite almost universal in
the Middle Ages, well in the English Middle Ages certainly,
but there does seem to be a marked preference for
human like names or endearment names for pet dogs or
lap dogs, whereas working dogs, so whether they're watchdogs or herders,
tend to have again human names, but more I suppose,
(14:38):
sort of like everyday kind of generic human names like gobi,
rather than names that are declaring more kind of affection,
I suppose. And then there's the kind of hunting hounds,
which are by far the best documented type of dog
and in fact type of animal really in the Middle Ages.
I mean, these huge long lists of recommended names for
hounds that are compiled in the period I mean, the
(14:58):
Internet seems to be quite famili with David Scott McNabb's
the document that he edited a number of years ago,
which is a list of the ABC of all manner
of all manner of hounds names after the ABC I
think it's called, which is appended to a manuscript of
the Master of Game by Edward of York, which contains
well over a thousand individual names for hounds that huntsmen
(15:19):
as obviously racked his brains trying to sit down and
write out as an extraordinary number of hounds names have survived.
Even though they do sort of have in some ways
kind of similar names to lap dogs and working dogs,
they also have very distinctive, very poetic, elaborate names as well,
sweet lips and horrible, but they tend to quite often
be very sort of like complex compound names which combine
(15:43):
a number of different elements. Ringwood is probably the most
generously testifying kind of hound name from the period as well,
you know, quite poetic, quite inventive, but also quite functional.
The name that you would be able to use bellowing
out in the course of hunt direct particular dog one way,
but again also reflects probably these are types of animals
(16:03):
that are associated with pleasure and play, the pleasure of
hunt and blood sports, so that pleasure filters into the
inventiveness and the poetic qualities their names often possess as well.
It's not a rigid pattern, but there's definitely a preponderance
of certain types of name for certain types of dog.
Lap Dogs called things like beauty and bone and even
(16:26):
pretty boy and things like that tend to be more
about affection compared to the more utilitarian working dog names
and then the more oddly poetic hound names that we find.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yes, I think the hound names are really interesting in
that many of them are sort of aspirational, so like
the type of thing that you name a puppy hoping
that they're going to turn out to be that way.
But then there's of course some of them that are
named like useless and lazy. I think that anyone who's
owned a dog will feel that.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, you do have to wonder kind of whether these
are imposing them from the word go, and whether they're
stuck with them, or whether there was a bit of
slippage and renegotiation of a name when it became apparent
that the dog was not living up to I'm sure
there'd be a dog that would not suit the name
honeysuckle if it's cooling to rolling and carrying.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I think we've all been there. Well, it's making
me think about how again, as you're saying, breeds were
not really a thing in the Middle Ages, so you
don't get the sort of names that come with a
pedigree or something like that. When it comes to dogs.
It's a dog and it has its own individual name,
not one on a certificate and then you call it
something else, you know. So this is something that's interesting
(17:40):
to me and that it's a noticeable difference.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
H Yeah, I see what you mean. So the dog
is defined by what it does rather than his kennel
or the line of descent that it comes from. It
doesn't matter who its spire is. It matters. I suppose.
It's kind of little bit of play with that idea.
I mean, there is a sort of power of a
classical funeral inscription involving a dog calness, praising his bloodline
(18:07):
as coming from the house of Megastomo, which means kind
of big mouth. Which is difficult to un draw any
kind of big conclusions because obviously it's it's just ridiculing
classical funeral funeral inscriptions, but maybe some kind of consciousness
of dogs having a pedigree, or maybe in fact it
tells us the exact opposite, there isn't it. You know
(18:27):
that That's why it's a funny joke, because who cares
what a dog's father is?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, I mean, maybe it didn't matter when it came
to hounds. He wanted a hound that had again, you know,
a background, their their father, their mother was good at
what they did. When it comes to lap dogs didn't
matter so much exactly. But you do make a good
point in that it seems that there were more commemorations
for dogs back in the ancient period. Then that stopped
(18:53):
for a while, and then maybe it was something intentional
as part of that Renaissance throwback to do in the
early modern period. I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, what interests me is just how many of those
funeral inscriptions for dogs actually do survive from the ancient world,
and you know, not only as artifacts from the Hellenic
period forward, but also you know, there are a lot
of pieces of verse that are divorced from any real
contacts that appear in the Greek anthology, which again as
sort of validictions written for a get an animal of
(19:26):
some form, which quite often do patasha name and by
extension a kind of identity to the animal being referred to,
mostly dogs, of course, and the Romans almost exclusively dogs.
I think. I don't think there's any Roman Latin inscriptions
that for any other animal. But the Greeks seem a
bit more. It's a bit of a broader church and
ancient Greeks. I suppose they do talk about a kind
(19:47):
of wider range of creatures there, the odd horse, the
odd bird, I think of uncertain species. But as you say,
it just disappears that cliche until it is self consciously
revived by the fifteenth century human like Petrarch, well possibly
Petrarch there is a versus attributed to him that might
not be by here, and also at the court of
(20:07):
Isabelladest in Mantua, of course, where it becomes a bit
of a bit of a kind of cult composing verse
to commemorate the dead pets, the duchess and to their children.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
It's an interesting thing to revive, I think, you know,
an interesting tradition to revive and tells us I think
a lot about the aims of that movement, but that
is beyond the scope of this podcast. So you've talked
a lot about dogs, and in your research you noticed
that that people were talking about dogs being the closest
species to us, and that makes sense. We need to
(20:41):
talk about horses, of course, because horses are the other
animal that are so much part of medieval life. So
what did you learn about horse names.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, it's a similar sort of situation that we find
with dogs. That the sociological or i guess, kind of
functional boundaries that exist to differentiate different types of horse,
which is the differentiate different types of dog, do seem
to have had an effect on the names that horses carry. Again,
it's not kind of an absolute distinction, but there does
again seem to be kind of patterned for sort of workhorses,
(21:12):
everyday cart horses having quite simple, stripped down, quite colloquial
human names, the versus the war horses, the destroyers that
you find described in quite often in wills when they
do appear in real everyday sources, but also in romance
literature and epic literature as well, which do have much
more complex compound names, things like bragware which means or grinder,
(21:38):
which is very kind of heavy metal name things along
those lines, versus Bayard, which is a pretty generic name
for any form of workhorse, or Chili, which is a
name for a mayor in English that you find from
the mid fourteenth century right up to the sixteenth century.
So again there is this odd you know, the language
(21:58):
that is supplied to ourimals that seem to observe the
social distinctions that animals partaken in the use of to
which they're put as well. So again it just shows
usage really is kind of bone deep that it does
have this gravitational pull on the labels that the animals
a tracked as well.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
M hmm.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And it felt like there's a lot of dogs that
are named for their physical characteristics, but it seemed like
this is a real trend when it comes to regular horses.
Work horses like that one is dapple and that one
is great. That's their name, that's their name.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And donkeys, even more so, donkeys don't even have the
distinction of having the slightly more kind of elevated poetic names.
They're just called grizzle or brunal or brown or gray
and that's it. That's all inspired.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, although I imagine if it's anything like having animals
around today. They probably had a million different nicknames. I
can't record.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I'm sure they did.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
One of the things that you noticed about horses is, well,
especially the ones that well they've showed up in records
because they're valuable enough to be exchanged, is that they
have four names, and they have surnames as well. This
is something that jumped out at you, right.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, again, I've did find that again kind of quite amusing.
And now I think we'd only give an animal a
surname as a joke. Yeah, I mean, it's quite funny
to give a kind of animal a full name, whereas horses, well,
the richest lists of four names that I found was
the list of gifts given by the Black Prince in
the thirteen fifties to various relatives and people whose kind
(23:34):
of attached to When the horses in that and do
tend to have surnames attached to it, it's not even
an anomaly. It does seem to be other records where
this does occur as well. I mean my kind of
takeway from it was that it does underscore again the
proximity between the horse and the human being. Again, we
do see that reflected in something like Isadore of Seville's
(23:54):
Eti Militarium, where he talks about horses being able to
demonstrate human like level of emotion, that the only animal
that can cry, he claims dubiously, but he does say
that so there is an even and ends his kind
of note on the horse by saying, you know that
the two species human and horse are so closely allied
(24:14):
that the centaur of ancient mythology to show how the
two natures can be combined in a single creature. Again,
very dubious stuff, But he wouldn't be able to make
those claims if horses were not so proximate towards human beings,
both conceptually and practically as well. And I think it
can't be a coincidence really that the only animal which
just routinely have a surname which is very much like
(24:37):
a medieval surname as well, usually displays where the horses
come from geographically. You know that there will be of Brussels,
or of York, or of Brighton or Bristol, or wherever
the horse happened to be acquiet in the first place. Again,
these are very much like medieval toponymic surnames. That wouldn't
have happened if there wasn't that sense that the horses
(25:00):
are very close to human beings in terms of the position,
the order of things, the organization of the natural world
that medieval culture kind of recognize and construct it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, well, and I think that this sort of comes
back around to what we're talking about in pedigree. This
is something that you mentioned as well, like you want
to trace where the horses are from, So it makes
more sense toive, especially because these are so much more
valuable than dogs, and horses are more valuable than even
the finest hunting dogs, so tracing their roots maybe is
a little bit more important.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, it does tend to be a kind of, as
you say, record of the horse's origin. Yes, maybe similar
to a human name, but not identical. I guess it's
the way to think about it. It's more like a
receipt that the horse carries with it in the name
shows where it's come from. So it would be like
if you could buy a horse at Tesco or Sainsbury's
or Walmart, maybe more kind of international, then it would
(25:54):
be like making that the horse's surname. I suppose the
dobbin of Walmart is a kind of reminder where it
came from and which aren't it if it's faulty or
there's any question about its abilities or quality.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
That's true, although Dobinov Walmart doesn't sound like it's going
to be a particularly well trained war horse.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
But I mean, I wouldn't write to battle myself.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
But yeah, oh, this is making me think about my
kids did writing lessons for a time and they had
a very docile old tour so that was called mister
t It just reminds me of the fact that we
sometimes like to call our peats and animals and stuff
by these names that are supposed to give them some
sort of dignity, but kind of as a joke.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, yeah, well mainly the thing, isn't I mean Mark
Twain said, isn't it? You know, man is the only
animal but blushes or needs to. Animals are impervious to embarrassments,
so we can we can call them whatever they want.
They're not going to be embarrassed by it, you know,
And quite we do take pleasure in doing that, sort
of giving them, saddling them with names that are again
incomprehensible to them, but quite amusing to us.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And yes, the number of ridiculous names. I call my dog.
My dog has an illustrious name. My kids had everything
to do with it, and he's named Apollo. But we
do not call I don't call him that. I call
him the most ridiculous names. And so I imagine this is
something that is sort of something timeless about that.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I think it is really I mean, quite a lot
of the sources that they ended up plundering for names
were comic ones. I suppose it's because the everyday world
that medieval people inhabited tended to be seen as quite funny,
and you know, particularly the kind of rural, rustic world.
I mean that's where most fablo was set, in that
sort of humdrum rural setting, and so quite often, you know,
(27:43):
animal names are treated as a part of the kind
of comic scenery or a maide jokes in their own
right as well. So yeah, I mean animals were funny.
I think the names funny.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
By extension, they are funny. But I guess, while I'm
on this, there were a lot of dogs that had
names from the ancient like a hound dog named Mars.
But one thing that you did point out is that
when it comes to Christianity, that does not cross over.
So you never found a houndog named Jesus, which is
good I think for the medieval world. That will probably
(28:15):
not go down well.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, well indeed, I mean there's that strange story in
Ettiane de Borbond's recollection when he's in the diocese at Lyon,
of course, about when he uncovers again it's quite well
known this story, but it's it's with bears repeating because
it's a good one. Uncovers the locals revering a saint
he's never heard, of course, Saint Gwaynfort. Apparently he's a
(28:37):
protector of children in the infancy as well, and there
are various rituals associate with him which will acquire the
protection of the saint that the local people are carrying out.
And he's quite interested in this. Who is this local saint,
this martyr he's never encountered, and he's appalled to discover
that Saint Gwyfort is in fact a greyhound. In time immemorial,
a local lord goes the story left the greyhound Goingford
(29:01):
with his son walked into the room after doing his
kind of lordly stuff whatever he was doing, a crusade
or hunting boar or deer who knows and discovered the
cradle overturned, blood everywhere, and the dog sitting in the
middle of it, wagging his tail. And so in a
fit of rage, he strikes the dog down with his
sword and then discovers the corpse of a snake that
(29:22):
the dog is obviously killed protect the infant, and hears
his infant crying and he survived, and everything's fine, And
so he has the dog buried with full funeral honors
in a show of penance, and the dog becomes revered
as a saint like people as a results of this,
And of course it's an interesting story, and again you know,
this semi divine dog. But I think more interesting is
(29:44):
ettiender boor Bond's response to it as an agent of
the official church, and that he has the dog immediately
exhumed and burned and the cult suppressed. And I think
that part of that may have been this sense that
animal names shouldn't cross into religious discourse. I found no
evidence at all of even you know, the names of
angels being applied to docs, or the names of saints,
(30:04):
the names of biblical figures. Again, it just it just
did not seem to happen at all. And I do
think that there may have been a kind of unspoken
to Boot that confusing those levels of the chain of
being the divine and the animal was simply not acceptable
at all. Confusing the animal and humans, fine, they were
(30:26):
quite happy to do that. There's an awful lot of
human names given to the dogs and animals in general,
even quite surprising ones, but certainly not names that have
any connotation of divinity. I think they tended not to
cross that line at all.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And I think that's a really interesting thing to note,
because there are so many places where we look back
and we are surprised by the way that you know,
you might have the story of Noah which has out
these swear words in it and stuff, and that's surprising.
But this is one line that they did not want
to cross. And so I think that's an interesting point
that you found that you made the book. So in
(31:02):
looking through all of these animals, you discovered a whole
bunch of other sort of random pets that people had
in the Middle Ages. So what kind of pats do
people have that weren't you know, cats, dogs, horses, what
did you find? Guinea pigs?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Guinea pigs now guinea pig will be fascinating squirrels weirdly,
that would probably be awful pets. But there are quite
a few records of squirrels, and we even know what
at least one of them was called Bun. So there's
a sixteenth century story that Thomas Churchyard tells about a
young lady somewhere I think on the Welsh border that
(31:42):
is chasing after her pet squirrel Bun and falls off
a wall trying to kind of recapture him, and dies
as a result. And so her memorial statue in the
church epics it with a squirrel on a chain. So
obviously this is a story that's been made up to
account for the fact she's got a squirrel in a chain,
I would imagine, but it does kind of underscore that
they probably were kept as pets, and there are I
(32:04):
think the literal psalter has an image of a squirrel
of the color and lead as well a young lady
traveling in a litter with a pet squirrel, So squirrels
would be one example. I suppose magpies were kind of
kept quite routine and jays, and again I'm aware of
this because their names tend to get recorded as well,
because they can be taught to speak. And so I mean,
(32:27):
this is kind of getting even more complicated now. But
you know, the very word that we use to describe magpies,
I suppose shows this the fact that they may have
been kept as pets in the past. They should really
be called pies from the Latin piker, and they are
pi in most other European languages and some form. And
yet the magpart is in fact derived from the fact
(32:50):
they were quite often called maggie. That was the kind
of accepted, generic, conventional name for a cage bird in
the period. So we can see quite clear from that,
you know, there is this kind of ancestry to the
magpie of their status as pets. And Jay's would have
been called wy we think as well, from various sources.
So yeah, the names do betray some oddities in pet
(33:11):
keeping that have fallen by the wayside by the twenty
first century.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Well, I love that there are enough monkeys being pets
that there is conventional names for monkeys, right, I think
you recorded like Bertran or Robert, yeah, or Martin or Jack,
like enough people having monkeys that there is a trend
for names for monkeys.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
A recognized name for them.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Again, as you say, it kind of expands into very
day language as well. I mean, you know, jack and apes.
The again quite antiquated insult, but is one that is
fairly prevalent in the sort of sixteenth century. Again, it
does record the fact that apes monkeys were generally called
jack when they work kept as pets. That there was. Again,
it's just a kind of standard name that they were given,
(34:00):
much like kind of medieval tittles or or rover or
cliche name. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, we didn't talk about cats, but I mean we
have cats like the ones that are in the Renard stories.
So you have ones that are like TIBs type thing
or teebel or things like that. Tibbalt comes in through Shakespeare.
But I didn't realize that a lot of cats were
also named Raoul. This is a great name for a cat,
(34:28):
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
I mean, which is my assumption if a cat could
name itself, it would come up with Raoul for kind
of back. Raoul is a kind of French cat name.
Is the terrific thing? Yeah, that one, but I mean, yes,
all you know, the favorite in English language sources being
gibb or Gibbie sort of short for Gilbert, which is
(34:50):
equally terrific.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I think, yeah, Gilbert is a great name for a cat.
You did notice that Hawk's got amazing names like hounds, it,
But poor Oxen, No, not really, not.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Many that I could find, no for such an everyday creature.
That's a strange thing, particularly when we're told by Edward
Topsail at the very beginning of the seventeenth century that
every ox has its own specific name, like every dog,
and then he lists absolutely no ox names at all,
as kind of exact The rest of the page is
given over to dogs. But then after that tantalizing teasing
(35:25):
bit of information, not a single ox name and I
couldn't unfortunately find any from combing through the sources, or
not many anyway.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Well, I was thinking about that and how people will
still address animals that they don't know. So there's probably
a lot of Oxen name stuff that would be equivalent
to like buddy, hey, buddy. It's probably going to be
named something because we just I don't think it's a
modern thing, but we just feel compelled to call something
by my name.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Particularly something that is kind of obviously animate and has
a degree of intelligence. It's hard to I don't know. Yeah,
as you say, maybe it is a sort of sense
of courtesy that we have.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I mean from the Bible story is that, you know,
many of us were told, and certainly people told in
the Middle Ages we are supposed to be naming animals.
That is one of our jobs, we thought.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
So the function. Yeah, as the stodiums of Eden.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, that's right. So I need to ask you what
was the most surprising animal that you found that was named?
Did you find any real surprises?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Well, anything that wasn't in the immediate circle of the
household or farm carrying a name I thought was kind
of quite strange. I mean, the fact there were so
many whale names popped up in the records is is
quite extraordinary, I think. And the fact they're all quite different,
and the fact that they're very deliberately monstrous and weird.
(36:49):
It's by definition strange, I suppose. But why wales needed
to be given names at all? I suppose. You know,
they are regarded as being almost semi mythic monstrous being,
so it compounds that sense of monstrosity. Calling things like
Fusty Cackalon and Jasconius and these outlandish bizarre concoctions that
are given to them. So whales, Yeah, the odd wolf
(37:11):
I've found a bit odd. I mean, particularly the specific
wolf I found in the early fifteenth century that's part
of a gang of wolves that are terrorizing Paris and
actually carrying away people and eating them, according to according
to the records during the severe famine in the fourteen thirties.
And the fact that he's called Coutu, which is kind
of like short tail, which is almost like a kind
of affectionate nickname really or quite a nice name for
(37:35):
a murderous man eating wolf to have. That was kind
of quite surprising. But also I think, yeah, those the
folk names that you find applied. Then the fact that
you know they've left their stamp on our language today,
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by that. But
you know the fact that Robin, there is a residue
of a medieval nickname given to that particular species. But
(37:56):
how prevalent that practice was as well, giving names to
wild and generic names to wild animals. So you know
hairs being called Wattie, and again the magpie being called
mag and things along those lines again, and those are
kind of odd names and I'm not really sure of
their function or why they exist, but they're sort of
in their way, quite pleasing, showing a playful, semi respectful
(38:20):
attitude towards the wider environments from medieval people that doesn't
really mirror a sense of wild creatures anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yes, Well, that's what speaks to me about this is
if you see this sort of creature every day, it
would be something that you just start to notice and
probably interact with, Like people do this all the time
with their bird feeders, start to notice the birds and
expect them, and so to me it speaks to that
real integration with the natural world that many of us
(38:48):
maybe don't have if we're living in urban settings today,
or maybe we do with the pigeons that we pass.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Actually, yeah, do you name pigeons as a matter of course.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I mean, I don't have a relationship with any pigeons,
but I imagine people that see them more often probably do.
I know that children tend to name everything they do,
and the birds and pigeons are certainly amongst those. So
one of my favorite names from the book was Chinese
name that tended to be generic for cats, which is
(39:21):
dark plumpness.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Oh, you are.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Perfect name for a cat. So I need to ask
you did you come across any names that you were like.
I love this name so much that the next time
I get a hawk or a I'm going to name
it this. Which one stuck out to you?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Again?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
I have to come back to Gilbert the cat name,
which I think is one of my favorite ones. I
like Raja Ladas, which is a name that undergoes a
bit of a jump between species. It starts off as
a I think Calentius in his translation of the Battle
of the Frogs and the Mice, that sort of weird
Homeric thing, applies it to the King of the Mice,
and then Rabbitli text it up and applies it to
(39:57):
Pantagrul's cat. I think it's so much better cat name,
So Roger Ladas or Bacon sure to you, it's probably
probably the one I would give that. But again, another
one I quite like is Dr Johanna's Cavalus, which is
supposedly a name again supposedly heavy quote marks of this
a story that's told about Rabbeli. He enrolled his horse
(40:20):
in the College of braider and before the deception was uncovered,
the horse managed to graduate with a medical degree, and
so it came from that point enrolled under the name
doctor Johannah's Cavalus, which costs me doctor John Horse. But again,
I like the story, I like the name. I think
it's just a terrific name to give any creature.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, a horse named doc.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
A horse with a doctoral degree.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, well, on that note, thank you so much Ben
for coming on and telling us all about animal names,
because this is perennially interesting. So thank you so much
for being here to tell us all about it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Thank you for hosting me. I'm very glad to pitch in.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
To find out more about Ben's work, you can visit
his faculty page at the University of Leicester. His new
book is introducing Medieval animal Names. Before we go, here's
Peter from Medievalist Not to tell us what's on the website.
What's up, Peter?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Hey, Hey, we have more riddles for you.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
All right, Okay, I did so well last time.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
This time they're math riddles though, so this can be
even better. So it seems that Alcohon of York wasn't
busy enough helping Charlemagne. You know, rulers Empire had time
to compose a few dozen of math riddles as part
of a learning book, Learning your arithmetic. All right, so
I'll give you one of them right now. In a street,
a walker meets some men and says to them, I
(41:44):
wish there were as many others as there are of you,
plus half of half than half of that last number.
Then with me included, we would be one hundred. Tell
me whoever wishes how many men the walker met?
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I don't know. I don't know, but you told me
before we start recording that this is kind of complicated.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
So yeah, yeah, there's a lot of math involved. So
I will direct people. If you really want to know
the answer, check out the website. There's that plus nine
other rebels.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Awesome. I'm gonna have to check out the website to
figure out the answer because I do not have that
one in my head. All right, what else is up?
Speaker 3 (42:26):
So we have a piece from Richard Abeles on the
men who fought with King Harold at Hastings. The anniversary
is today that we're recording.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
On anyway, Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Yeah. We have a few Hastings and Norman conquest related
It's tough this week. Plus Jack Wilson has a piece
on a Mongol princess, thirteenth century Mongol princess who's also
an unbeaten wrestler.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That sounds amazing. I mean, talk about a teaser for
an article. Everyone's going to want to read this one.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah. Indeed, indeed it was a fun article to read
and one thing great bro Jackie. He creates his own
illustrations for the piece.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Oh amazing. Yeah, definitely worth checking out.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
So we have that, plus much much more on the website.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Well, thanks Peter for stopping by and telling us all
about it. Thanks, Thank you as always to all of
you for your kind support each week. Whether you're sharing
your favorite episodes, letting the ads play through, or becoming
patrons on Patreon, you have my thanks because it's your
support that makes this work possible. To find out more
(43:29):
or to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com
slash Medievalists for everything from animals to cannibals. Follow medievalist
dot net on Instagram at medievalist net or blue sky
at Medievalists. You can find me Danielle Sibalski across social
media at fiven Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you
(43:49):
can find my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our
music is by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and have
yourself an awesome day.
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred eleven of
the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host Danielle Sebalski. In the beginning,
so the story goes, humans were given dominion over the animals,
(00:24):
and pretty much the first thing we started doing was
giving them names, from the sublime to the utterly ridiculous.
For everyone who's looked at a puppy or a kitten
and wondered what it should be called and then called
it an embarrassingly silly nickname. Anyway, this episode is for you.
This week I spoke with doctor Ben Parsons about medieval
(00:45):
animal names. Ben is Associate professor at the University of
Leicester and the author of Punishment and Medieval Education and
two Middle English prayer cycles. His new book is Introducing
Medieval Animal Names. Our cover on what people named their
pets and working animals, how we know about them, and
which animals are still called by their medieval nicknames is
(01:08):
coming up right after this. Well, welcome Ben to talk
about animal names. This is so exciting and I love
the book so much, so welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
No, thank you for having me down The answer as
a real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, I need to ask you where do you find
animal names in the Middle Ages, because some of the
sources you found were pretty interesting. Yeah, I think this
is the first question, like if you don't hear people
calling for their pets, where do you find.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, I mean it's a difficult one to kind of
answer in a short way. I mean there was a
period where it felt like I couldn't look anywhere without
bumping into one, almost by accident. I mean, even my
kind of tangential reading that I was doing for sort
of fun, like reading. I'd never read Procopius's Secret History before,
so I thought, I'll give that a look, and then
there's a name of a whale sort of pops up.
(02:00):
What's the end of their I was reading size Seanaguan's
pillow Books. I didn't know anything about Japan in the
kind of the turn of the eleventh century, and you know,
within the first few pages as the name of a
dog and a cat sort of pops out. So it's
I think it's like you know the bar of Minehoft syndrome,
where once you're conscious of something, it's suddenly everywhere, and
it just seemed to be that's what happened, you know.
(02:22):
They are kind of odd everyday details, so we tend
to kind of overlook in texts, and the more that
I became aware of them, the more they sort of
just jumped out at me, and I was able to
rather quickly sort of compile quite a big informal database
of them. So, look, I suppose might be the kind
of unsystematic serendipity.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean some of them you're mentioning
things like literature. People mentioned them as well, but you
found you found names in wills too, and we were
talking about wills not too long ago on the podcast.
So what kind of creatures appear in wills that end
up named?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, well, the ones that are kind of left and
named in will and similar kind of documents do tend
to be only a fairly kind of narrow I guess
what we call demographic. It only tends to be horses
or at bests, as the odd sheep pops up in
the sort of Pyrenees, and a few wills there as well.
But typically they do tend to be kind of high
value animals like horses. Rather, I've not once found a
(03:18):
dog name in a will, which is kind of quite
interesting when I mean dogs were not transferred other livestock
does get mentioned but not named, and that's the sort
of interesting kind of distinction I had to wrestle with
as well, why they're these anonymous creatures, whereas when horses
do appear in wills, they typically do have their names
attached to them. Yeah, the will names there again, it's
(03:39):
kind of it's sort of I suppose exemplifies one of
the kind of patterns I found running through the way
the animal names are presented in the period, the fact
that the records are always kind of transparent or neutral,
that there is a kind of selection process going on
at work, even in the sort of hidden choices that
are made about which names are preserved and where they're preserved,
And often the kind of discourse in which an animal
(04:02):
name appears is big influence on the way that name
is used and whether it's preserved at all. So yeah,
it's been an overly complex simple question.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
No, no, no, I mean, I'm asking these questions because
trying to find these things can be really difficult, and
so I'm always interested in the way that you find them.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Especially.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
One aspect of this that maybe hadn't occurred to me
before now is that I'm always interested in what the source.
And I think that comes from, you know, all the
training that we do and all the critical thinking that
we do. So yeah, I'm always interested in where do
we find this? Are we just picking it up, you know,
out of thin air? And obviously this isn't what you're doing,
So I'm always interested. Don't worry about the answer being long.
(04:49):
So when we're looking at animal names, you went all
the way back to the ancient period to start digging.
Why did you go there if you were going to
be looking at the Middle Ages?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Well, yeah, I mean I just kind of ended up
getting drawn backwards. I suppose. I think it was again
what we're just talking about, that kind of awareness that
the records themselves have a kind of agency that you know,
records are not just impersonal facts. They are created by
human beings for human reasons. And part of that when
we're dealing with medieval sources is the fact that everyone,
(05:22):
more or less everyone that's kind of writing these sources
will have gone through a certain pattern of training, which
will in turn of involved being immersed in classical models
and classical sources. So I was very aware that, particularly
as you say, when I'm dealing with literary sources. I mean,
Christopher Canon's wrote written about this kind of quite brilliantly
in his work as well, the fact that you know
(05:43):
that classical stuff is just part of the sort of
undergrowth of medieval literary culture that we can't really escape it.
So I was aware I need to kind of go
back to that, and that proved quite useful as well,
because it showed that there were certain classical myths and
frameworks that were obviously very useful for medieval people when
thinking about and recording their engagements with animals. An example
(06:03):
would be Ovid's myth of Acteon, the hunter that's turned
into a deer by Diana when he barges in on
her bathing and sees her naked and is torn apart
by his own hounds. And in Ovid and Hyginus, this
has used as a kind of excuse to give this
great long list of the different kind of names of
hounds and medieval authors and early modern authors when they're
(06:23):
translating this story or adapting the story. He took it
as a kind of golden opportunity to just pop out
Greek ified Roman names and pop in their own sort
of French or English versions. So we get kind of
long lists of contemporary English names model on that, and
even when they're not direct translating that story, it's an
obvious kind of sort of inspiration for a lot of
writers as well, for again giving lists of dog names.
(06:46):
So again I was aware that you can't really overlook
that's just part of the kind of furniture of medieval writing.
So I need to go back to those Greek models
and see how much they sort of informed the way
that medieval people were referring to animals in which they
refer to them, in the motives for referring to them,
in naming them as well. And then I just kind
of got caught in the current and I'm drifting back
(07:06):
to Egypt and the earliest names there. They appear in
various inscriptions and topics.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So when you were looking at Egyptian sources, sort of tangentially,
you found there was like a pink dog collar that
had a pet name on it. Like that's incredible. Imagine
being the archaeologist who have found that that's Increa.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yes, it's in the I mean it's one of the
royal tombs, I suppose, so it may be a very
unremarkable find in the context of various chaviti and golden
statues and the other stuff that the paris under take
with them. But as far as I'm concerned, the most
valuable thing that you would find it that, Yeah, as
you say, an actual color with an inscription of a
name on it is an extraordinary thing, particularly because the
(07:49):
medieval colors that we have Leeds Castle Museum and other
sources don't have names on at all. At best, they'll
have their owner's name or some kind of vague inscription
relating to the fact of ownership or the owner themselves.
But yeah, the idea of recording an animal's name on
a color just seems to have dropped out of old
conception until at least the kind of Victorian period.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I think that in itself is interesting. So what else
did you find about the way that the ancients named animals,
so not just pets, but animals in general. What did
you find as sort of trends.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, again, it's I'm kind of like the mercy of
the sources and what the sources want to tell me.
I suppose one of the things that was particularly kind
of interesting when comparing the ancient world to the Middle Ages,
which is how much the usages to which animals were
put sort of informs whether their names are recorded or not. Again,
this is sort of Toynbee's work I was drawing on here.
There's a lot of mosaics from the ruins of amphitheaters
(08:48):
and other performance spaces which record the names of animals
used in staged hunts that as a kind of parallel
to gladiatorial combat. So we have things like the name
of a seal called that you eloy, which means beautiful
ship or something like that. I think, various kind of
lion names and leopard names as well, like flammothfare or
I think a spear carrier, that sort of thing. There's
(09:11):
a bull appears in one of these called Homicider or
the murder the bull, which is a terrific name. But
of course these are not names that you tend to
find in the Middle Ages, because the Middle Ages did
not carry out these types of blood spots. So again
it shows that there is this kind of weird filter
going on underneath the cultures that we're talking about, which
determine what names get recorded, whether they get recorded. And
(09:33):
one of the kind of big factors in that is
whether the animals are useful or not, and the ways
in which they're useful. Obviously, you know, ancient Rome had
a very bloodthirsty sort of usage of these types of animals,
which meant their names did get written down in some form,
whereas the Middle Ages didn't have those uses, so you know,
no names are attached to those animals and they don't
come down. So I suppose that was kind of one
(09:55):
of the starkest thing comparing the two periods that the
ancient world, you know, the kind of really drove home
that point that usage is very key in determining what
makes it into the documents in the first place.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, I've found that really stuck out in the book
as well, where you have these animals that are fighting,
and of course you'd need to have a name for
them so that they can be promoted, so that people
could come and see their fights and things like that.
But that was something that again maybe not having studied
ancient Romas and depth, I hadn't thought about either. But
of course then they need to have a name. That
(10:29):
is how the person makes money off these animals. Okay,
so if we move into the Middle Ages, one of
the things that you said in the book is this
is kind of what we're getting at already. Naming is
inseparable from evaluation. So what do you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, I mean you can, honestly, and the way we
use animal names today, I think I mean you take
your kind of average dog name, whatever you call your dog,
whether it be Archie or Keith or I don't know,
or something traditionless like Rover or Fido, which is perhaps
a bit kind of old hat now. But it's not
really a name. I mean, it's not a name in
the way that a human being carries a name. You know.
(11:05):
A dog's name is an instruction, a command. The dog
is not aware that its name is a kind of
foundation of its identity. It doesn't have that level of
psychological or onto logical attachment to the name. It's not
the core of its being in the way a human's
name is. The dog doesn't have that. It may have
a kind of consciousness of the certain sound pattern, which
(11:28):
means that it has to come to its master or mistress,
but that doesn't get integration into the dog's sense of
self in the same way it does with ours, at
least you know, as far as we know. And so
I think that's the kind of idea. I was playing
with the idea that animal names are really commands and instructions.
They are an attempt by us to try it in
some way govern or project onto the kind of animal world,
(11:51):
And of course the judgment and the desiderata that we
are projecting onto that world are our own as human beings,
So they tell us a lot more about our sense
of the animal world and our ambitions and projects of
the animal world than they do about the animal world itself.
These names are kind of human constructions that are then
(12:13):
superimposed onto animals. They're not arising out of the animal
world that we're latching onto. So yes, they're very much
names that say a lot more about the human sense
of the animal world than they do about the world itself.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Well, and one of the things that you talk about
sort of related to this is that the utility of
the animal is reflected in the name. So let's stick
with dogs for a minute, because you said that there's
different categories of dogs and this really has an effect
on how they are names. So tell us about how
people conceptualize dogs, because it's not just all dogs are
pets and working dogs. Different things that they did right
(12:50):
the way.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That we divide up dogs by breed is very much
anachronistic when we think about the Middle Ages. I mean,
it's only really in the early part of the nineteenth
century things breed takes over as the main way of
thinking about different types of dogs, you know, the different
way of classifying them and ranking them. In the Middle Ages,
it's all about the usage to which the dog is put.
(13:11):
There's some very eloquent passages on this sort of and
the best one is probably from Gower's Vox Clemantis or
the Visio Anglia, kind of early section of that, where
he describes the thirteen to eighty one passant revolt or
thirteen to eighty one uprising as a kind of animal allegory,
and there's a depiction of all the different dogs casting
off their owner's influence, shedding their chains and their leashes
(13:33):
and their collars, and joining in this rioters. And he
doesn't talk about breed. He talks about the miller's dog.
You talk about the baker's dog. He talks about the
watch dog, the hound, the hunting hound. So it's very
much divided up in terms of what function the dog
performs for a human being rather than its biology. Or
its genealogy. Even so, again it's very kind of clear
(13:54):
and nicely laid out, and I mean, that's not surprising
information from the Middle Ages, So I suppose what is
surprising is kind of how deep that goes, and the
fact that it does seem to have some influence on
the types of name that the dogs are receiving, so
they've kind of got porous boundaries a bit these classifications.
There are certain names that travel between types of dog.
(14:15):
Jackie seems to be kind of quite almost universal in
the Middle Ages, well in the English Middle Ages certainly,
but there does seem to be a marked preference for
human like names or endearment names for pet dogs or
lap dogs, whereas working dogs, so whether they're watchdogs or herders,
tend to have again human names, but more I suppose,
(14:38):
sort of like everyday kind of generic human names like gobi,
rather than names that are declaring more kind of affection,
I suppose. And then there's the kind of hunting hounds,
which are by far the best documented type of dog
and in fact type of animal really in the Middle Ages.
I mean, these huge long lists of recommended names for
hounds that are compiled in the period I mean, the
(14:58):
Internet seems to be quite famili with David Scott McNabb's
the document that he edited a number of years ago,
which is a list of the ABC of all manner
of all manner of hounds names after the ABC I
think it's called, which is appended to a manuscript of
the Master of Game by Edward of York, which contains
well over a thousand individual names for hounds that huntsmen
(15:19):
as obviously racked his brains trying to sit down and
write out as an extraordinary number of hounds names have survived.
Even though they do sort of have in some ways
kind of similar names to lap dogs and working dogs,
they also have very distinctive, very poetic, elaborate names as well,
sweet lips and horrible, but they tend to quite often
be very sort of like complex compound names which combine
(15:43):
a number of different elements. Ringwood is probably the most
generously testifying kind of hound name from the period as well,
you know, quite poetic, quite inventive, but also quite functional.
The name that you would be able to use bellowing
out in the course of hunt direct particular dog one way,
but again also reflects probably these are types of animals
(16:03):
that are associated with pleasure and play, the pleasure of
hunt and blood sports, so that pleasure filters into the
inventiveness and the poetic qualities their names often possess as well.
It's not a rigid pattern, but there's definitely a preponderance
of certain types of name for certain types of dog.
Lap Dogs called things like beauty and bone and even
(16:26):
pretty boy and things like that tend to be more
about affection compared to the more utilitarian working dog names
and then the more oddly poetic hound names that we find.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yes, I think the hound names are really interesting in
that many of them are sort of aspirational, so like
the type of thing that you name a puppy hoping
that they're going to turn out to be that way.
But then there's of course some of them that are
named like useless and lazy. I think that anyone who's
owned a dog will feel that.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, you do have to wonder kind of whether these
are imposing them from the word go, and whether they're
stuck with them, or whether there was a bit of
slippage and renegotiation of a name when it became apparent
that the dog was not living up to I'm sure
there'd be a dog that would not suit the name
honeysuckle if it's cooling to rolling and carrying.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I think we've all been there. Well, it's making
me think about how again, as you're saying, breeds were
not really a thing in the Middle Ages, so you
don't get the sort of names that come with a
pedigree or something like that. When it comes to dogs.
It's a dog and it has its own individual name,
not one on a certificate and then you call it
something else, you know. So this is something that's interesting
(17:40):
to me and that it's a noticeable difference.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
H Yeah, I see what you mean. So the dog
is defined by what it does rather than his kennel
or the line of descent that it comes from. It
doesn't matter who its spire is. It matters. I suppose.
It's kind of little bit of play with that idea.
I mean, there is a sort of power of a
classical funeral inscription involving a dog calness, praising his bloodline
(18:07):
as coming from the house of Megastomo, which means kind
of big mouth. Which is difficult to un draw any
kind of big conclusions because obviously it's it's just ridiculing
classical funeral funeral inscriptions, but maybe some kind of consciousness
of dogs having a pedigree, or maybe in fact it
tells us the exact opposite, there isn't it. You know
(18:27):
that That's why it's a funny joke, because who cares
what a dog's father is?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, I mean, maybe it didn't matter when it came
to hounds. He wanted a hound that had again, you know,
a background, their their father, their mother was good at
what they did. When it comes to lap dogs didn't
matter so much exactly. But you do make a good
point in that it seems that there were more commemorations
for dogs back in the ancient period. Then that stopped
(18:53):
for a while, and then maybe it was something intentional
as part of that Renaissance throwback to do in the
early modern period. I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, what interests me is just how many of those
funeral inscriptions for dogs actually do survive from the ancient world,
and you know, not only as artifacts from the Hellenic
period forward, but also you know, there are a lot
of pieces of verse that are divorced from any real
contacts that appear in the Greek anthology, which again as
sort of validictions written for a get an animal of
(19:26):
some form, which quite often do patasha name and by
extension a kind of identity to the animal being referred to,
mostly dogs, of course, and the Romans almost exclusively dogs.
I think. I don't think there's any Roman Latin inscriptions
that for any other animal. But the Greeks seem a
bit more. It's a bit of a broader church and
ancient Greeks. I suppose they do talk about a kind
(19:47):
of wider range of creatures there, the odd horse, the
odd bird, I think of uncertain species. But as you say,
it just disappears that cliche until it is self consciously
revived by the fifteenth century human like Petrarch, well possibly
Petrarch there is a versus attributed to him that might
not be by here, and also at the court of
(20:07):
Isabelladest in Mantua, of course, where it becomes a bit
of a bit of a kind of cult composing verse
to commemorate the dead pets, the duchess and to their children.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
It's an interesting thing to revive, I think, you know,
an interesting tradition to revive and tells us I think
a lot about the aims of that movement, but that
is beyond the scope of this podcast. So you've talked
a lot about dogs, and in your research you noticed
that that people were talking about dogs being the closest
species to us, and that makes sense. We need to
(20:41):
talk about horses, of course, because horses are the other
animal that are so much part of medieval life. So
what did you learn about horse names.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, it's a similar sort of situation that we find
with dogs. That the sociological or i guess, kind of
functional boundaries that exist to differentiate different types of horse,
which is the differentiate different types of dog, do seem
to have had an effect on the names that horses carry. Again,
it's not kind of an absolute distinction, but there does
again seem to be kind of patterned for sort of workhorses,
(21:12):
everyday cart horses having quite simple, stripped down, quite colloquial
human names, the versus the war horses, the destroyers that
you find described in quite often in wills when they
do appear in real everyday sources, but also in romance
literature and epic literature as well, which do have much
more complex compound names, things like bragware which means or grinder,
(21:38):
which is very kind of heavy metal name things along
those lines, versus Bayard, which is a pretty generic name
for any form of workhorse, or Chili, which is a
name for a mayor in English that you find from
the mid fourteenth century right up to the sixteenth century.
So again there is this odd you know, the language
(21:58):
that is supplied to ourimals that seem to observe the
social distinctions that animals partaken in the use of to
which they're put as well. So again it just shows
usage really is kind of bone deep that it does
have this gravitational pull on the labels that the animals
a tracked as well.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
M hmm.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And it felt like there's a lot of dogs that
are named for their physical characteristics, but it seemed like
this is a real trend when it comes to regular horses.
Work horses like that one is dapple and that one
is great. That's their name, that's their name.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And donkeys, even more so, donkeys don't even have the
distinction of having the slightly more kind of elevated poetic names.
They're just called grizzle or brunal or brown or gray
and that's it. That's all inspired.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, although I imagine if it's anything like having animals
around today. They probably had a million different nicknames. I
can't record.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I'm sure they did.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
One of the things that you noticed about horses is, well,
especially the ones that well they've showed up in records
because they're valuable enough to be exchanged, is that they
have four names, and they have surnames as well. This
is something that jumped out at you, right.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, again, I've did find that again kind of quite amusing.
And now I think we'd only give an animal a
surname as a joke. Yeah, I mean, it's quite funny
to give a kind of animal a full name, whereas horses, well,
the richest lists of four names that I found was
the list of gifts given by the Black Prince in
the thirteen fifties to various relatives and people whose kind
(23:34):
of attached to When the horses in that and do
tend to have surnames attached to it, it's not even
an anomaly. It does seem to be other records where
this does occur as well. I mean my kind of
takeway from it was that it does underscore again the
proximity between the horse and the human being. Again, we
do see that reflected in something like Isadore of Seville's
(23:54):
Eti Militarium, where he talks about horses being able to
demonstrate human like level of emotion, that the only animal
that can cry, he claims dubiously, but he does say
that so there is an even and ends his kind
of note on the horse by saying, you know that
the two species human and horse are so closely allied
(24:14):
that the centaur of ancient mythology to show how the
two natures can be combined in a single creature. Again,
very dubious stuff, But he wouldn't be able to make
those claims if horses were not so proximate towards human beings,
both conceptually and practically as well. And I think it
can't be a coincidence really that the only animal which
just routinely have a surname which is very much like
(24:37):
a medieval surname as well, usually displays where the horses
come from geographically. You know that there will be of Brussels,
or of York, or of Brighton or Bristol, or wherever
the horse happened to be acquiet in the first place. Again,
these are very much like medieval toponymic surnames. That wouldn't
have happened if there wasn't that sense that the horses
(25:00):
are very close to human beings in terms of the position,
the order of things, the organization of the natural world
that medieval culture kind of recognize and construct it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, well, and I think that this sort of comes
back around to what we're talking about in pedigree. This
is something that you mentioned as well, like you want
to trace where the horses are from, So it makes
more sense toive, especially because these are so much more
valuable than dogs, and horses are more valuable than even
the finest hunting dogs, so tracing their roots maybe is
a little bit more important.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, it does tend to be a kind of, as
you say, record of the horse's origin. Yes, maybe similar
to a human name, but not identical. I guess it's
the way to think about it. It's more like a
receipt that the horse carries with it in the name
shows where it's come from. So it would be like
if you could buy a horse at Tesco or Sainsbury's
or Walmart, maybe more kind of international, then it would
(25:54):
be like making that the horse's surname. I suppose the
dobbin of Walmart is a kind of reminder where it
came from and which aren't it if it's faulty or
there's any question about its abilities or quality.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
That's true, although Dobinov Walmart doesn't sound like it's going
to be a particularly well trained war horse.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
But I mean, I wouldn't write to battle myself.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
But yeah, oh, this is making me think about my
kids did writing lessons for a time and they had
a very docile old tour so that was called mister
t It just reminds me of the fact that we
sometimes like to call our peats and animals and stuff
by these names that are supposed to give them some
sort of dignity, but kind of as a joke.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, yeah, well mainly the thing, isn't I mean Mark
Twain said, isn't it? You know, man is the only
animal but blushes or needs to. Animals are impervious to embarrassments,
so we can we can call them whatever they want.
They're not going to be embarrassed by it, you know,
And quite we do take pleasure in doing that, sort
of giving them, saddling them with names that are again
incomprehensible to them, but quite amusing to us.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And yes, the number of ridiculous names. I call my dog.
My dog has an illustrious name. My kids had everything
to do with it, and he's named Apollo. But we
do not call I don't call him that. I call
him the most ridiculous names. And so I imagine this is
something that is sort of something timeless about that.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I think it is really I mean, quite a lot
of the sources that they ended up plundering for names
were comic ones. I suppose it's because the everyday world
that medieval people inhabited tended to be seen as quite funny,
and you know, particularly the kind of rural, rustic world.
I mean that's where most fablo was set, in that
sort of humdrum rural setting, and so quite often, you know,
(27:43):
animal names are treated as a part of the kind
of comic scenery or a maide jokes in their own
right as well. So yeah, I mean animals were funny.
I think the names funny.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
By extension, they are funny. But I guess, while I'm
on this, there were a lot of dogs that had
names from the ancient like a hound dog named Mars.
But one thing that you did point out is that
when it comes to Christianity, that does not cross over.
So you never found a houndog named Jesus, which is
good I think for the medieval world. That will probably
(28:15):
not go down well.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, well indeed, I mean there's that strange story in
Ettiane de Borbond's recollection when he's in the diocese at Lyon,
of course, about when he uncovers again it's quite well
known this story, but it's it's with bears repeating because
it's a good one. Uncovers the locals revering a saint
he's never heard, of course, Saint Gwaynfort. Apparently he's a
(28:37):
protector of children in the infancy as well, and there
are various rituals associate with him which will acquire the
protection of the saint that the local people are carrying out.
And he's quite interested in this. Who is this local saint,
this martyr he's never encountered, and he's appalled to discover
that Saint Gwyfort is in fact a greyhound. In time immemorial,
a local lord goes the story left the greyhound Goingford
(29:01):
with his son walked into the room after doing his
kind of lordly stuff whatever he was doing, a crusade
or hunting boar or deer who knows and discovered the
cradle overturned, blood everywhere, and the dog sitting in the
middle of it, wagging his tail. And so in a
fit of rage, he strikes the dog down with his
sword and then discovers the corpse of a snake that
(29:22):
the dog is obviously killed protect the infant, and hears
his infant crying and he survived, and everything's fine, And
so he has the dog buried with full funeral honors
in a show of penance, and the dog becomes revered
as a saint like people as a results of this,
And of course it's an interesting story, and again you know,
this semi divine dog. But I think more interesting is
(29:44):
ettiender boor Bond's response to it as an agent of
the official church, and that he has the dog immediately
exhumed and burned and the cult suppressed. And I think
that part of that may have been this sense that
animal names shouldn't cross into religious discourse. I found no
evidence at all of even you know, the names of
angels being applied to docs, or the names of saints,
(30:04):
the names of biblical figures. Again, it just it just
did not seem to happen at all. And I do
think that there may have been a kind of unspoken
to Boot that confusing those levels of the chain of
being the divine and the animal was simply not acceptable
at all. Confusing the animal and humans, fine, they were
(30:26):
quite happy to do that. There's an awful lot of
human names given to the dogs and animals in general,
even quite surprising ones, but certainly not names that have
any connotation of divinity. I think they tended not to
cross that line at all.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And I think that's a really interesting thing to note,
because there are so many places where we look back
and we are surprised by the way that you know,
you might have the story of Noah which has out
these swear words in it and stuff, and that's surprising.
But this is one line that they did not want
to cross. And so I think that's an interesting point
that you found that you made the book. So in
(31:02):
looking through all of these animals, you discovered a whole
bunch of other sort of random pets that people had
in the Middle Ages. So what kind of pats do
people have that weren't you know, cats, dogs, horses, what
did you find? Guinea pigs?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Guinea pigs now guinea pig will be fascinating squirrels weirdly,
that would probably be awful pets. But there are quite
a few records of squirrels, and we even know what
at least one of them was called Bun. So there's
a sixteenth century story that Thomas Churchyard tells about a
young lady somewhere I think on the Welsh border that
(31:42):
is chasing after her pet squirrel Bun and falls off
a wall trying to kind of recapture him, and dies
as a result. And so her memorial statue in the
church epics it with a squirrel on a chain. So
obviously this is a story that's been made up to
account for the fact she's got a squirrel in a chain,
I would imagine, but it does kind of underscore that
they probably were kept as pets, and there are I
(32:04):
think the literal psalter has an image of a squirrel
of the color and lead as well a young lady
traveling in a litter with a pet squirrel, So squirrels
would be one example. I suppose magpies were kind of
kept quite routine and jays, and again I'm aware of
this because their names tend to get recorded as well,
because they can be taught to speak. And so I mean,
(32:27):
this is kind of getting even more complicated now. But
you know, the very word that we use to describe magpies,
I suppose shows this the fact that they may have
been kept as pets in the past. They should really
be called pies from the Latin piker, and they are
pi in most other European languages and some form. And
yet the magpart is in fact derived from the fact
(32:50):
they were quite often called maggie. That was the kind
of accepted, generic, conventional name for a cage bird in
the period. So we can see quite clear from that,
you know, there is this kind of ancestry to the
magpie of their status as pets. And Jay's would have
been called wy we think as well, from various sources.
So yeah, the names do betray some oddities in pet
(33:11):
keeping that have fallen by the wayside by the twenty
first century.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Well, I love that there are enough monkeys being pets
that there is conventional names for monkeys, right, I think
you recorded like Bertran or Robert, yeah, or Martin or Jack,
like enough people having monkeys that there is a trend
for names for monkeys.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
A recognized name for them.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Again, as you say, it kind of expands into very
day language as well. I mean, you know, jack and apes.
The again quite antiquated insult, but is one that is
fairly prevalent in the sort of sixteenth century. Again, it
does record the fact that apes monkeys were generally called
jack when they work kept as pets. That there was. Again,
it's just a kind of standard name that they were given,
(34:00):
much like kind of medieval tittles or or rover or
cliche name. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, we didn't talk about cats, but I mean we
have cats like the ones that are in the Renard stories.
So you have ones that are like TIBs type thing
or teebel or things like that. Tibbalt comes in through Shakespeare.
But I didn't realize that a lot of cats were
also named Raoul. This is a great name for a cat,
(34:28):
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
I mean, which is my assumption if a cat could
name itself, it would come up with Raoul for kind
of back. Raoul is a kind of French cat name.
Is the terrific thing? Yeah, that one, but I mean, yes,
all you know, the favorite in English language sources being
gibb or Gibbie sort of short for Gilbert, which is
(34:50):
equally terrific.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I think, yeah, Gilbert is a great name for a cat.
You did notice that Hawk's got amazing names like hounds, it,
But poor Oxen, No, not really, not.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Many that I could find, no for such an everyday creature.
That's a strange thing, particularly when we're told by Edward
Topsail at the very beginning of the seventeenth century that
every ox has its own specific name, like every dog,
and then he lists absolutely no ox names at all,
as kind of exact The rest of the page is
given over to dogs. But then after that tantalizing teasing
(35:25):
bit of information, not a single ox name and I
couldn't unfortunately find any from combing through the sources, or
not many anyway.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Well, I was thinking about that and how people will
still address animals that they don't know. So there's probably
a lot of Oxen name stuff that would be equivalent
to like buddy, hey, buddy. It's probably going to be
named something because we just I don't think it's a
modern thing, but we just feel compelled to call something
by my name.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Particularly something that is kind of obviously animate and has
a degree of intelligence. It's hard to I don't know. Yeah,
as you say, maybe it is a sort of sense
of courtesy that we have.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I mean from the Bible story is that, you know,
many of us were told, and certainly people told in
the Middle Ages we are supposed to be naming animals.
That is one of our jobs, we thought.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
So the function. Yeah, as the stodiums of Eden.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, that's right. So I need to ask you what
was the most surprising animal that you found that was named?
Did you find any real surprises?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Well, anything that wasn't in the immediate circle of the
household or farm carrying a name I thought was kind
of quite strange. I mean, the fact there were so
many whale names popped up in the records is is
quite extraordinary, I think. And the fact they're all quite different,
and the fact that they're very deliberately monstrous and weird.
(36:49):
It's by definition strange, I suppose. But why wales needed
to be given names at all? I suppose. You know,
they are regarded as being almost semi mythic monstrous being,
so it compounds that sense of monstrosity. Calling things like
Fusty Cackalon and Jasconius and these outlandish bizarre concoctions that
are given to them. So whales, Yeah, the odd wolf
(37:11):
I've found a bit odd. I mean, particularly the specific
wolf I found in the early fifteenth century that's part
of a gang of wolves that are terrorizing Paris and
actually carrying away people and eating them, according to according
to the records during the severe famine in the fourteen thirties.
And the fact that he's called Coutu, which is kind
of like short tail, which is almost like a kind
of affectionate nickname really or quite a nice name for
(37:35):
a murderous man eating wolf to have. That was kind
of quite surprising. But also I think, yeah, those the
folk names that you find applied. Then the fact that
you know they've left their stamp on our language today,
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by that. But
you know the fact that Robin, there is a residue
of a medieval nickname given to that particular species. But
(37:56):
how prevalent that practice was as well, giving names to
wild and generic names to wild animals. So you know
hairs being called Wattie, and again the magpie being called
mag and things along those lines again, and those are
kind of odd names and I'm not really sure of
their function or why they exist, but they're sort of
in their way, quite pleasing, showing a playful, semi respectful
(38:20):
attitude towards the wider environments from medieval people that doesn't
really mirror a sense of wild creatures anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yes, Well, that's what speaks to me about this is
if you see this sort of creature every day, it
would be something that you just start to notice and
probably interact with, Like people do this all the time
with their bird feeders, start to notice the birds and
expect them, and so to me it speaks to that
real integration with the natural world that many of us
(38:48):
maybe don't have if we're living in urban settings today,
or maybe we do with the pigeons that we pass.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Actually, yeah, do you name pigeons as a matter of course.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I mean, I don't have a relationship with any pigeons,
but I imagine people that see them more often probably do.
I know that children tend to name everything they do,
and the birds and pigeons are certainly amongst those. So
one of my favorite names from the book was Chinese
name that tended to be generic for cats, which is
(39:21):
dark plumpness.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Oh, you are.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Perfect name for a cat. So I need to ask
you did you come across any names that you were like.
I love this name so much that the next time
I get a hawk or a I'm going to name
it this. Which one stuck out to you?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Again?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
I have to come back to Gilbert the cat name,
which I think is one of my favorite ones. I
like Raja Ladas, which is a name that undergoes a
bit of a jump between species. It starts off as
a I think Calentius in his translation of the Battle
of the Frogs and the Mice, that sort of weird
Homeric thing, applies it to the King of the Mice,
and then Rabbitli text it up and applies it to
(39:57):
Pantagrul's cat. I think it's so much better cat name,
So Roger Ladas or Bacon sure to you, it's probably
probably the one I would give that. But again, another
one I quite like is Dr Johanna's Cavalus, which is
supposedly a name again supposedly heavy quote marks of this
a story that's told about Rabbeli. He enrolled his horse
(40:20):
in the College of braider and before the deception was uncovered,
the horse managed to graduate with a medical degree, and
so it came from that point enrolled under the name
doctor Johannah's Cavalus, which costs me doctor John Horse. But again,
I like the story, I like the name. I think
it's just a terrific name to give any creature.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, a horse named doc.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
A horse with a doctoral degree.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, well, on that note, thank you so much Ben
for coming on and telling us all about animal names,
because this is perennially interesting. So thank you so much
for being here to tell us all about it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Thank you for hosting me. I'm very glad to pitch in.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
To find out more about Ben's work, you can visit
his faculty page at the University of Leicester. His new
book is introducing Medieval animal Names. Before we go, here's
Peter from Medievalist Not to tell us what's on the website.
What's up, Peter?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Hey, Hey, we have more riddles for you.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
All right, Okay, I did so well last time.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
This time they're math riddles though, so this can be
even better. So it seems that Alcohon of York wasn't
busy enough helping Charlemagne. You know, rulers Empire had time
to compose a few dozen of math riddles as part
of a learning book, Learning your arithmetic. All right, so
I'll give you one of them right now. In a street,
a walker meets some men and says to them, I
(41:44):
wish there were as many others as there are of you,
plus half of half than half of that last number.
Then with me included, we would be one hundred. Tell
me whoever wishes how many men the walker met?
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I don't know. I don't know, but you told me
before we start recording that this is kind of complicated.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
So yeah, yeah, there's a lot of math involved. So
I will direct people. If you really want to know
the answer, check out the website. There's that plus nine
other rebels.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Awesome. I'm gonna have to check out the website to
figure out the answer because I do not have that
one in my head. All right, what else is up?
Speaker 3 (42:26):
So we have a piece from Richard Abeles on the
men who fought with King Harold at Hastings. The anniversary
is today that we're recording.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
On anyway, Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Yeah. We have a few Hastings and Norman conquest related
It's tough this week. Plus Jack Wilson has a piece
on a Mongol princess, thirteenth century Mongol princess who's also
an unbeaten wrestler.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That sounds amazing. I mean, talk about a teaser for
an article. Everyone's going to want to read this one.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah. Indeed, indeed it was a fun article to read
and one thing great bro Jackie. He creates his own
illustrations for the piece.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Oh amazing. Yeah, definitely worth checking out.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
So we have that, plus much much more on the website.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Well, thanks Peter for stopping by and telling us all
about it. Thanks, Thank you as always to all of
you for your kind support each week. Whether you're sharing
your favorite episodes, letting the ads play through, or becoming
patrons on Patreon, you have my thanks because it's your
support that makes this work possible. To find out more
(43:29):
or to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com
slash Medievalists for everything from animals to cannibals. Follow medievalist
dot net on Instagram at medievalist net or blue sky
at Medievalists. You can find me Danielle Sibalski across social
media at fiven Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you
(43:49):
can find my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our
music is by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and have
yourself an awesome day.
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