869: lion and leopard Apr 25, 2017

On certain coat of arms there will be lions which represented courage, among other things. Richard I of England, also known as Richard the Lion Heart had three lions on his crest, but if you were to take a time-machine and ask him what they were called, he might call them 'leopards'. The 'leo-' of that last word is the same as 'Leo' the constellation, with that and 'lion' both from the Latin for, you guessed it, 'lion' ultimately from Greek. What's perhaps more interesting is that the '-pard' in the second half of 'leopard' also comes from a Greek word, 'pardos', meaning 'leopard' as we think of them now, but really 'panthers' before the name was given to the American cat. In older writings in English 'pard' would have been normal in the same context as 'leopard' now. For a long period in history, 'lion' and 'leopard' were more or less interchangeable, as some people thought leopards were a sort of hybrid with lions; especially since neither animal lived in Europe, people in England didn't really have much of a concrete understanding of them.

For more on European perceptions of African beasts, see this on hyenas.