Kangaroo's
Watching "have I got news for you" last night and heard the funniest thing: -
On discovering Australia, Cpt Cook started to explore with the help of an aborigine man. On seeing a kangaroo Cook said, "what's that?" and the aborigine replied, "kangaroo". And so the creature was named.
However the aboriginal word "kangaroo" roughly translates as "I don't know"!!!! Don't know how true that is but it definitely should be.
hehe.. I heard a joke once.. it doesn't translate into english well since it's a norwegian joke about a norwegian family, not well versed in english, who go to a zoo. when the kid in the family asks what that animal is, the father replies "that animal is dangerous" (only when you say "dangerous" in plain norwegian it sounds silly, right finti?). And so on it goes with the whole meat-eater section of the zoo...
There are lots of stories like that.
The national flower of Scotland is a "Thistle".
When the King was looking for a flower for an emblem to represent the country he went up into the Highlands with a local man. The man was ordered to find an unusual flower or he'd be thrown in jail. He saw a weird looking thing and said "this'll do".
The King thought he said "Thistle" and that how it was named.
Actually RC..I would say that Columbus "discovered" the Americas on behalf of Spain. As far as European "discovery" the vikings were in North America first.
As far as Native American Origin..there is supposed to be alot of Asian genetic contributions but I don't think they were the only people to come over. They say that there were probably alot of paths of migration to the Americas by various peoples.
Heres what I found on the word Kangaroo:
A widely-held belief has it that the word kangaroo comes from an Australian Aboriginal word meaning “I don't know.” This is in fact untrue. The word was first recorded in 1770 by Captain James Cook, when he landed to make repairs along the northeast coast of Australia. In 1820, one Captain Phillip K. King recorded a different word for the animal, written “mee-nuah.” As a result, it was assumed that Captain Cook had been mistaken, and the myth grew up that what he had heard was a word meaning “I don't know” (presumably as the answer to a question in English that had not been understood). Recent linguistic fieldwork, however, has confirmed the existence of a word gangurru in the northeast Aboriginal language of Guugu Yimidhirr, referring to a species of kangaroo. What Captain King heard may have been their word minha, meaning “edible animal.”