On 5 March 1858, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal about the value of learning the common names for species in another language:
In proportion as I understood the language, I saw them from a new point of view.
With this in mind, here are translations of the English-language name California condor into 21 other languages.
My method was simple: take advantage of Google’s translation tool.
The beauty and value of names in other languages lies both with the written appearance and the sound. So, for languages based on alphabets other than the Roman (English), I include the corresponding spelling in the Roman alphabet when this is provided by the translation tool. That Roman spelling at least provides a sense of the name’s sound.
The languages are loosely sorted by region. I have retained the capitalization yielded by the translation tool.
French:
Condor de Californie
Italian:
Condor della California
Spanish:
Cóndor de California
Danish:
Californisk kondor
Finnish:
Kalifornian kondor
German:
Kalifornischer Kondor
Polish:
Kondor kalifornijski
Russian:
Kaliforniyskiy kondor
Albanian:
Përcjellësi i Kalifornisë
Greek:
Kóndora tis Kalifórnia
Arabic:
kandur kalifurnia
Hebrew:
Bengali:
Kyāliphōrni ā kana ara
Hindi:
kailiphorniya ke kondor
Xhosa:
ECondor condor
Zulu:
ECoror condor
Chinese:
Jiāzhōu tū yīng
Japanese:
Kariforuniakondoru
Hawaiian:
Kalepuni condor
Maori:
Kaawaatiri California
Esparanto:
Kalifornia kondoro
It is certainly notable that the condor name, in some form, exists across so many languages. But now I am curious about the exceptions: Albanian, Bengali, Chinese, and Maori. Notably, the African languages Xhosa and Zulu retain condor but not California.
Some languages known for words that look much different than those in English were disappointments. California condor translates into Turkish as California Condor and into Welsh as Condor California.
In older documents I have seen variations in the above. For example, in German, either or both Kalifornischer and Kondor sometimes begin with the letter C.
To search a substantial collection of names for the California condor in Native American languages, please visit the California Condor Reference.
Pseudogryps 