Aardvarks

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. This is Rob Daniel calling from Charleston, South Carolina.

Hey, Rob. What’s up?

Hi, Rob.

So one of my dear friends, we kind of have this thing going back for a long time, kind of an inside joke about aardvarks.

And now in this age of texting, I was just sort of texting the joke, and she wrote back, is that really how you spell aardvarks?

Because I guess she just, you know, for years hadn’t looked at it in print.

And I was like, yeah, it is kind of weird that there’s this superfluous A at the beginning of Aardvark.

And I sort of wondered to myself, is this A there?

Because the person who named the Aardvark wanted to be the first word in the dictionary.

And how likely do you think that is?

You know, people, I feel like at least nowadays people name things, you know, for, you know, some sort of personal reason or for some sort of, you know, there’s like Einsteinium and stuff.

And I thought, you know, that’s a good a reason if any.

Like if you wanted your word to somehow stand apart from the other words, why not make it first in the dictionary?

I don’t know that it is first in the dictionary.

I haven’t checked.

It’s right up there.

I don’t know about first, but I think it’s pretty safe to say, Rob, that we don’t know who named the aardvark.

It’s a word that’s been around for a long time.

And the reason that it has that funny spelling is that it comes from the language in South Africa, Afrikaans, which is very closely related to Dutch.

And if you’ve seen any Dutch, then you know that often there’s that double A.

And aardvark actually comes from a couple of words from that language that mean earth pig because it’s a burrowing animal.

And if you actually look at the two components of that word, art, well, in Afrikaans it’s artfark.

And if you look at those two components, the art is related to earth and the fark is related to pork in English.

So it’s an earth pig.

Do people eat the aardvark like we eat pork?

I don’t think so. I think what’s going on here is something that happens quite a bit in language where you see an animal or a food or something like that that you’ve never seen before.

And so you give it a name that’s that’s related to something that you already know.

For example, the word porpoise in English comes from Latin words that actually mean pig fish, porcus meaning pig and piscis meaning fish like Pisces.

And so it’s another example of that.

The aardvark is a burrowing animal, and so they named it the earth pig.

That’s a very cool answer.

I liked your answer, too.

I secretly still wish that it was a plot to reach the top of the dictionary, but I’m glad to know the real reason.

A-A-A-A-A-A-A-Aardvark Auto Repair.

First in the phone book.

If I ever have the opportunity to name a specific species of aardvark, which is unlikely because I’m a graphic designer, but if I do, I’m going to go with AAA aardvark.

Just a beat-out history.

I like that.

Hey, Rob, thanks for calling.

Thanks, buddy.

Thanks so much for having me.

Have a great afternoon.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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