What’s in a Name?

A few days ago, Denise from Cumberland County in Kentucky left a comment on my Ringdocus post, asking about curious creatures in her area. This led to surfing around Bigfoot sites, where I came across the term “Wild Woolly Bullies“.

I love love LOVE this term.

But it started me thinking about naming conventions, and how people categorize the unidentifiable. Does the community choose a name that’s frightening, or funny? Or do they fall back on a butchered anglicized version of an indigenous name��– which in turn was originally a term of endearment, respect, or fear? Are amusing names a way of stripping the fear out of the unknown, or is it away of discrediting the claims of witnesses, or both? It’s my suspicion that people would take a witness more seriously if she claimed to have seen a ‘Fire Demon Wolf’ instead of a ‘Fluffy Sparkle Dog’.

Here’s a few of the terms I’ve come across, most of which are perfectly creative and quite lovely and in my opinion would make awesome band names.

Wild Woolly Bullies
Skookum*
Zoobie
Goat Man
Splinter Cat
Stone Coats

What sort of mythological monsters haunt your area, and what does your community call them? Leave your monsters in the comments! :)

“Wolpertinger” by Rainer Zenz – Rainer Zenz. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

*why a monster in a Louisiana swamp is named ‘Skookum’, which on the West Coast of BC is a Chinook word used for ‘good, solid’, I just don’t know. Maybe I ought to watch the film before I criticize…