Good companions
17/03/07 Filed in: animals
Anthropomorphism means giving human characteristics to animals, plants, inanimate objects or imaginary creatures.
Religion and mythology
Hinduism: Ganesh has an elephant's head and Hanuman is an ape.
In the Ancient Egyptian religion gods and goddesses were represented as being part human and part animal: Horus the sky god had the body of a man and the head of a hawk.
Greek mythology: Zeus the sky god often took the form of an animal when in pursuit of women, such as the Titan Metis.
Native American religion is rich with examples of mythical beasts.
Machines
We speak to TVs and computers, people name their car. We tell them to behave or work properly - if a machine malfunctions or breaks down we may blame it. The computer I'm writing this on is called Snowflake - it's a white iMac.
Animals
We name our pets - they become part of our family.
We have a few fish which live in a pond in the garden made from the foundations to a World War II air raid shelter. The names we give them are usually descriptive - Blackie, Whitey, Orangy, or semi-descriptive - MIB (Mysterious Black Shubunkin), Sharky (with a black shark-like dorsal fin). Another anthropomorphised fish was Fancy Fin the Fourth. There were no fancy fins one, two or three - 'he' was unique and exotic. I was fond of FFVIth but sadly he died in a bucket while being treated for a mouldy patch on his fancy fin. RIP.
There have been a few over the years which seemed to have more 'personality' than the other fish, so they've got names that describe how we feel about them. Princess was assigned feminine gender when 'she' had her tail bitten off when a tiny translucent pinkish fishlet 2cm long. She was saved by keeping her in a tin bowl (the fish hospital) for a month till her stump had healed.
We give names to animals kept in zoos
The Rhino in Paignton Zoo is called Sita - she gave birth to a baby girl last month, watched by the BBC...
Religion and mythology
Hinduism: Ganesh has an elephant's head and Hanuman is an ape.
In the Ancient Egyptian religion gods and goddesses were represented as being part human and part animal: Horus the sky god had the body of a man and the head of a hawk.
Greek mythology: Zeus the sky god often took the form of an animal when in pursuit of women, such as the Titan Metis.
Native American religion is rich with examples of mythical beasts.
Machines
We speak to TVs and computers, people name their car. We tell them to behave or work properly - if a machine malfunctions or breaks down we may blame it. The computer I'm writing this on is called Snowflake - it's a white iMac.
Animals
We name our pets - they become part of our family.
We have a few fish which live in a pond in the garden made from the foundations to a World War II air raid shelter. The names we give them are usually descriptive - Blackie, Whitey, Orangy, or semi-descriptive - MIB (Mysterious Black Shubunkin), Sharky (with a black shark-like dorsal fin). Another anthropomorphised fish was Fancy Fin the Fourth. There were no fancy fins one, two or three - 'he' was unique and exotic. I was fond of FFVIth but sadly he died in a bucket while being treated for a mouldy patch on his fancy fin. RIP.
There have been a few over the years which seemed to have more 'personality' than the other fish, so they've got names that describe how we feel about them. Princess was assigned feminine gender when 'she' had her tail bitten off when a tiny translucent pinkish fishlet 2cm long. She was saved by keeping her in a tin bowl (the fish hospital) for a month till her stump had healed.
We give names to animals kept in zoos
The Rhino in Paignton Zoo is called Sita - she gave birth to a baby girl last month, watched by the BBC...