Antarctic Dictionary

penguin

Thesaurus

penguin [The earliest known use of the English word 'penguin' was in 1578 by Richard Hakluyt, from Thomas Buts who referred to "the Island of Penguin" from a voyage to Newfoundland waters in 1536 (Gaskell, Jeremy M. in Archives of Natural History 26: 101-112.) In 1758 Linnaeus gave the scientific name Pinguinus impennis to the now extinct great auk, a flightless northern hemisphere bird.

Gaskell's article is of great interest to anyone concerned with the derivation of penguin; he points out that 'it is probable that opinion on the origin of the name Penguin will always be divided on the lines stated by Van Noordt nearly four centuries ago - that is, either from their fatness, or their white heads. John Sparks and Tony Soper (Penguins, 1968, 152 ff) also have an excellent discussion of the name. Despite the firm assertion of my Welsh teacher in Canberra in 1977, I agree with authors such as Sparks and Soper, and Petersen (1979), in finding no convincing evidence for a Welsh origin, though pen gwynne does translate fr Welsh as 'head white'.]

Any bird of the fam. Spheniscidae. These are the icon of Antarctica. Penguins live only in the southern hemisphere, from Antarctica to the equatorial tropics of the Galapagos. There are about 17 species - in colder waters the lack of diversity is made up for by the staggering abundance of these birds. As Ann Elk would say, all penguins are dark on the upper side and pale to white beneath, and they are well adapted for marine life. All penguins are flightless, with short flipper-like forewings, and spend their time mainly at sea where they feed on fish and krill, coming onto land or ice for extended periods to breed and moult.

The Antarctic Dictionary, Hince, 2000; 255