Why are these South American rodents called “Guinea Pigs”?
It all started with a popular dish from the New World
Yesterday, I was on the phone with my best friend. Suddenly, Gino, her lovely Guinea pig started squeaking, and she had to move to another room to continue our call. She got back to our conversation, which I actually don’t recall because a more important question crossed my mind: Why is this animal called Guinea pig?
Actually, this was not exactly my question, because I first formulated it in my native language, Portuguese. We call these rodents “porquinhos da Índia”, which can be strictly translated as “little Indian pigs”.
Since I was already in touch with a proud Guinea pig nerd, I asked her if she knew if they are originally from Guinea or from India or both. Her answer added another level of confusion to this matter: “They are native from South America”.
I had to put my detective suit on and desperately google-searched for answers. It is hard for me to imagine how someone can confuse an animal that is clearly a hairy rodent with a pig, but since they are kind of exotic, I can understand how someone would label its species wrong.
But what intrigued me the most was how can Portuguese and English languages attribute two different origin countries that…
