Orangutan (猩猩, 오랑우탄, オランウータン)

Both trivia and studying different languages has given me a new interest: learning about words in the English language that come from various global languages. It really makes me convinced that not only is America a melting pot of cultures, but the language spoken here, English, a mishmash, jambalaya, potpourri of different languages, some more than others of course, but it certainly feels like it takes a little smidge from every language, if only the different foods and plants/herbs that come from each culture. This past Friday on Jeopardy I learned about babka bread, which is a yeast cake whose name comes from a Polish name for "grandmother," kind of like the Russian "babushka" meaning the same thing. Spanish and French are the big languages, but sometimes Spanish can get confused with Italian, in that a word ending with a vowel (-i, -a, -o) can be right in that border line between Italian or Spanish origins. Unfortunately Korean hasn't carved a large role in the English language other than in Korean food items (bulgogi, banchan, kimchi, etc.) but BTS, Blackpink and the rest of KPop is paving the way! That's how cultural revolutions begin! 

The surprising language that most people wouldn't even think about, but I happened to have studied, is Indonesian: a language that's shared by Malaysian and Indonesian people but hasn't really spread into other part of the words, but it's responsible for some commonly used terms American people use like it's nothing and don't think about why they're calling it that, which is "orangutan" - coming from the Indonesian words "human" (Orang) and "forest" (hutan), which is kind of what an orangutan is, a creature with a common ancestor of humans who lives in the forest. The reason it stuck is likely because it sounds and looks cool: Orangutan looks a lot like "orange" which a lot of them have that color skin/fur, and the peas and valleys of saying the word makes it roll off the tongue. Plus that drink "Tang" that tasted like orange juice, and was made famous when the astronauts of Apollo 11 took it to the moon (fun trivia fact). 

Orangutan's the most prominent word from Indonesian, but not the only one: pangolin and dugong (yes like the Pokemon) are animals with Indonesian roots, but also the word "bantam" which is used for small fowl like chicken or ducks, but is more commonly used in the term "bantamweight" which is a weight class usually around 135 pounds or so (yes there are men who fight at 135 pounds, which seems like a really low weight for muscular men; just the muscles alone seem like they should weigh a man down). 

The famous spy for Germany in WWI, Mata Hari, actually has an Indonesian/Malaysian name: it means eye of the day, appropriate for a spy I guess. I guess the lesson is when you're learning words and names of things/people/places, be curious and understand where those name come from; there's usually a story behind them.