# Why are they called Hedgehogs?



## Spikeball (Jun 17, 2016)

Yeah..


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## bobble (Apr 30, 2016)

if i remember from my uni days, we studied a variety of animals and their habitats. Its something to do with the way they forage and eat. They go underneath hedges and other vegetation, making snorting noises like a hog.

I might be remembering that wrong though, so anyone feel free to correct me if I am


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## Spikeball (Jun 17, 2016)

bobble said:


> if i remember from my uni days, we studied a variety of animals and their habitats. Its something to do with the way they forage and eat. They go underneath hedges and other vegetation, making snorting noises like a hog.
> 
> I might be remembering that wrong though, so anyone feel free to correct me if I am


Ah that makes sense. They also remind me of pigs from how they chew a little


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## Draenog (Feb 27, 2012)

How funny, I just wrote something about this last week on my blog. They are called hedgehogs in English because they have a pig like nose, make pig like sounds and forage under hedges.

However, in several other languages including my native language they have different names. I'll quote a bit I wrote about it (I replied to a post of a Swede who wondered why hedgehogs were called igelkott in Swedish (literal translation 'leech cone'):

There are a few languages which have similar words for hedgehog: the German name for hedgehog is _Igel _and the Dutch use _egel_. _Echel _meant leech in Middle Low German. 
It seems the words for leech and hedgehog in those languages have been derived from the same word(s). It goes way back - within the Germanic languages there are several variations on _igel, _and there's the Greek _echĩnos_, the Armenian _ozni, _the Lithuanian_ ežỹs _and the Old Church Slavonic _ ježĭ_, all meaning hedgehog_. _
The words above seem to have come from the Greek _ékhis_ or _ékhidna_, meaning snake. The hedgehog is known to eat not only insects but also snakes (among other small animals) - them being immune to snake venom has been a persistent myth for ages in many countries (they aren't completely immune but do have a higher resistance). There are many folk stories about hedgehogs killing and eating vipers. 
From this word the words for leech (_echel_, _ëgala, blutegel_)might have been formed as well.

In Norwegian dialect _igjel_ meant wild boar. The current Norwegian and Danish word for hedgehog also feature the hog: _pinnsvin _and _pindsvin_.

But the _Igel_, _egel _and related versions basically mean 'snake eater'. It's definitely more badass than a hedge pig.


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## twobytwopets (Feb 2, 2014)

I must agree, "snake eater" is much tough-guy-er than shrub-swine.


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## Spikeball (Jun 17, 2016)

Well well. Thats something.


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## FinnickHog (Dec 1, 2014)

Draenog, you fascinate me. I love digging through etymology but I hadn't done any looking into "hedgehog". That's really interesting!

I see -kotte as a suffix in swedish means cone, as in pinecone (tallkotte) so I'm guessing the -kott in igelkott is descended from the same root word?

That makes Finnick a literal "snake eating tree cone"? He'll love that :lol:.


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## Draenog (Feb 27, 2012)

Yes _kotte _means pinecone in current Swedish but it might have had other meanings in the past (one of them being 'little clump', or so I have found).

I did some more digging into the word _hedgehog _- and there might be more to the name than the original, most obvious explanation. _Hedge _can also be derived from the Middle German _Hagen_; meaning 'thorn'. 
Also, it's been said the flesh of the hedgehog tastes like pork and if you remove a hedgehog's quills it looks like a baby wild boar...
The word heyghoge traces back to around 1450, then it changed into hedghogge and later the current hedgehog.

If thorn is part of the original name it seems to have more in common with _pinnsvin _and _pindsvin _(_pinn _and _pind _meaning 'prickle').

In Dutch the word for hedgehog traces back to a glossary from 1240. It's written as igel, but there are also dialect versions featured like _iggelvarken_ and _iegelkoar _(_varken _and _koar _mean 'pig')
I did found a text which questions the snake eater version. In Dutch the verb_ eggen _basically means 'to prick' and an _eg_ is a well-known agricultural tool called a harrow in English, which is usually a spiky sort of thing (see spike harrow) used for breaking up the surface of the soil.

Now if we forget about the snake version - it's going to get cuter. 
The Dutch etymology dictionary (which uses the snake version btw) states the word originally had the diminutive suffix _-ila_ behind it_. 
_This might be difficult to explain because English doesn't really use diminutive suffixes (which is a loss imo, because you can make everything sound cute and small by simply adding _-(t)je_ behind the word - or in German _-chen_, _-lein_, Spanish _-itol-ita_, _illol-illa_ etc.). 
Okay back to hedgehog. What if it indeed (or also) meant 'prickle'? A hedgehog in Dutch would be a _stekeltje_, a little/tiny prickle.
English obviously doesn't cover it but just believe me when I say it sounds cute. 

However, this one source is the only one I found in favour of the prickle, the others all go with the snake version.

And last but not least to refer to my own username, which is the Welsh word for hedgehog - in Welsh (_draenog_), Irish (_grainneog_) and Scottish (_crainneag_) it means 'the horrible one'. :lol:


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## FinnickHog (Dec 1, 2014)

Aaaah that's amazing! Stekeltje is adorable!

So what did the Welsh, Irish, and Scottish have against hedgehogs so much that they thought they were "horrible"? :lol:

I studied Old English and now I'm really curious if hedgehogs come up at all in any of those texts. Away to the dictionary with me!


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## FinnickHog (Dec 1, 2014)

I found a reference to hedgehogs in England between the years 955 and 1010!

In "Life of St. Edmund" Edmund and Sebastian get bombarded with arrows, and there's a simile!

_he eall wæs besæt mid heora scotungum swilce igles byrsta, swa swa Sebastianus wæs._

Basically, "He [Sebastian] was all covered with arrows as a hedgehog is of bristles."

Hedgehog is _igil_, which ties into the Germanic use of _igel _. They also used "igil" to mean "porcupine" and "sea urchin". All spikey things. Very cool!


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## Spikeball (Jun 17, 2016)

Wow who knew the word Hedgehog was so deep..


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## Draenog (Feb 27, 2012)

FinnickHog said:


> I found a reference to hedgehogs in England between the years 955 and 1010!
> 
> In "Life of St. Edmund" Edmund and Sebastian get bombarded with arrows, and there's a simile!
> 
> ...


Yes igil was used before the word hedgehog in England. The word urchin might be related to the French word hérisson. 
We also call a sea urchin a zee-egel (sea hedgehog), but I guess we're fond of adding "sea" in front of animal names. A seal for example is called a zeehond (sea-dog).

As for the Welsh/Scottish/Irish names, why they are called that I am not sure. I found another translation for _grainneog_ which translated it to 'little ugly thing'. Well, I guess it might be about their appearance... Although there are many stories surrounding the hedgehog, from the Romans using them as a forecast for spring (what is now 'groundhog day' in the US, as there are no hedgehogs native to the States) to Medieval Brits hunting down hedgehogs because they were said to steal milk from cow's udders. Some even believed them to be witches in disguise. Then there's of course the famous story as written down by Pliny the Elder of the hedgehog climbing apple trees or grape vines, knocking the fruit off and rolling around in it so it would stick to its quills. The animal then takes the fruit to its burrow to feed it to its young or keep it stored there for winter. Of course this is complete nonsense, but it was being used as a Christian metaphor.

There were other cultures with a positive view on the hedgehog (and I'm not just talking about the ones that cook and eat them because they think a hedgehog's flesh has healing powers - this is still done to this day in some cultures). Since they are nocturnal and hibernate hedgehogs were seen to have a strong connection with the lunar cycle and the cycle of life. The ancient Egyptians depicted the animal in their art, probably because they thought it'd have defensive powers. The Babylonians thought the hedgehog had a connection with the goddess Ishtar. And there are many more stories about hedgehogs, there's lots of wonderful old art too, unfortunately not everything is easy to find.


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