Actually the europeans were calling them elk before the north americans called the moose! ;)
The animal bearing the scientific name Alces alces is known in Britain as the elk and in North America as the moose.
The British English word elk has cognates in other Indo-European languages, for example elg in Norwegian, älg in Swedish, Elch in German and łoś in Polish. Confusingly, the word elk is used in North America to refer to a different animal, Cervus canadensis, also known as the wapiti which is similar though slightly smaller (the wapiti is the second largest deer species), and behaviorally divergent from the smaller red deer of central and western Europe. Presumably early European explorers in North America called it elk because of its size and presumably because, as men coming from the British Isles they would have had no opportunity to see the difference between a member of the genus Cervus and an animal fitting the description of Alces at home, where the latter was nowhere present in the 17th and 18th century.
The word moose is a borrowing from an Algonquian language, probably Narragansett, and according to early sources likely derived from moosu meaning "he strips off". The word 'moose' first entered English in 1606 from Captain Thomas Hanham's 'Mus' (compare to Abenaki mus), and in 1616 from Captain John Smith's 'Moos', with possible mutual reinforcement in usage.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-09-08 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 04:41 am (UTC)As far as I kmow they actually do not have elk in Sweden
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Date: 2011-09-09 01:50 pm (UTC)The animal bearing the scientific name Alces alces is known in Britain as the elk and in North America as the moose.
The British English word elk has cognates in other Indo-European languages, for example elg in Norwegian, älg in Swedish, Elch in German and łoś in Polish. Confusingly, the word elk is used in North America to refer to a different animal, Cervus canadensis, also known as the wapiti which is similar though slightly smaller (the wapiti is the second largest deer species), and behaviorally divergent from the smaller red deer of central and western Europe. Presumably early European explorers in North America called it elk because of its size and presumably because, as men coming from the British Isles they would have had no opportunity to see the difference between a member of the genus Cervus and an animal fitting the description of Alces at home, where the latter was nowhere present in the 17th and 18th century.
The word moose is a borrowing from an Algonquian language, probably Narragansett, and according to early sources likely derived from moosu meaning "he strips off". The word 'moose' first entered English in 1606 from Captain Thomas Hanham's 'Mus' (compare to Abenaki mus), and in 1616 from Captain John Smith's 'Moos', with possible mutual reinforcement in usage.