Interesting fact I learned today. How many of you knew it already?

10 comments
  1. I would like to point out that he (Michael Agricola) had probably seen lions in heraldic Coats of Arms, but had not made the connection nor was told what the big cat in them was called.

  2. There are other great ones as well, such as ”luutarha” for graveyard for example. It means ”bone yard”.

  3. Related to this topic, you can find this same phenomena from old painting. The paintings were based on the descriptions heard by their creaters. Very few of them had actually seen for example exotic animals and plants.

    Heres one example

    [Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights](https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html)

  4. In the original book Vaarallinen Juhannus and the 80’s/90’s Moomin animation series they actually use the word “jalopeura”, that’s where I learnt it haha

  5. I guess the word “Leijona” is quite new. I have an old astronomy book (printed in 1959) in which star constellations Leo and Leo Minor were called “Jalopeura” and “Pikku Jalopeura”. “Leijona” was mentioned in text but like “Leijona eli Jalopeura” which makes me think that Leijona wasn’t common enough yet.

    Edit. Apparently Leijona is almost as old as Jalopeura ([link](https://kaino.kotus.fi/vks/?p=article&word=leijona&vks_id=VKS_54f3133f0a3024ecdcf0144ce87c68cf)). I wonder why they used Jalopeura so bloody long.

  6. I have read that Jalopeura actually meant moose in some Finnish dialects.

    There is nothing common with either deer or moose and lion. I have heard that there is a theory that the commonality is that the Constallstion Leo was constallstion of “nouble deer”.

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