A baloo is a bear

[Skywatcher]

A simba is a lion.

[njtt]

I’m gonna get you in my tent tent, tent, tent, tent
We’ll find out where the wuzzle went, went, went, went, went
We’ll fill his footprints with cement, ment, ment, ment
We’ll dance the tango in my tent!
V. Stanshall

[Malacandra]

@Wile_E

So, in Jungle Book, Baloo’s name was really just Bear?

Now guess what Bagheera’s name was.

[jayjay]

@Malacandra

Baloo, for what it’s worth, is Hindi for “bear”.

I just found this out this past weekend, from a comment made by a friend of a friend. I was just like “Whoa!”

[KKKK]

@Malacandra

And it rises from the grave again.

Baloo, for what it’s worth, is Hindi for “bear”.

To be exact, the Hindi for bear is Bhaloo, not Baloo.

[KKKK]

@Wile_E

So, in Jungle Book, Baloo’s name was really just Bear?

Well, bear in Hindi is actually Bhaloo. So you have Baloo the Bhaloo – I don’t know if Kipling simply used an Anglicized pronunciation, or whether it was deliberate.

Incidentally, Sher is lion/tiger, so Sher Khan is basically Tiger the tiger.

[Count_Blucher]

@Wile_E

So, in Jungle Book, Baloo’s name was really just Bear?

“…what bear?”

[jayjay]

@KKKK

Incidentally, Sher is lion/tiger, so Sher Khan is basically Tiger the tiger.

Wouldn’t it be more like (and I know this isn’t a precise equivalent) “King Tiger”?

[Malacandra]

@KKKK

To be exact, the Hindi for bear is Bhaloo, not Baloo.

Probably not much point in the exactitude, since “bh” isn’t a spelling that occurs in too many English words and the Anglicised spelling “Baloo” would be an approximation of the English pronunciation of the Hindi word.

The name of this guy, a splendid cricketer and subsequently campaigner for Dalit rights, I have always seen spelled without the h.

And as mentioned above, “Khan” doesn’t mean “tiger” as far as I’m aware.

The other animal I can think of OTTOMH whose name means what animal he is would be Hathi the elephant. (Nag, the villainous snake in Rikki-tikki-tavi, is of course in The Jungle Book but not in the Mowgli continuity.)

[Malacandra]

@jayjay

Wouldn’t it be more like (and I know this isn’t a precise equivalent) “King Tiger”?

“Lord Tiger” at any rate - Hathi (and later Mowgli himself) are top dogs in the jungle, and when Hathi tells Shere Khan to am-scray in How Fear Came, Shere Khan doesn’t stop to argue.

I was delighted to see some of my Indian co-workers at a well-known insurance company some years back trading stocks on this site

[pulykamell]

@Malacandra

Probably not much point in the exactitude, since “bh” isn’t a spelling that occurs in too many English words and the Anglicised spelling “Baloo” would be an approximation of the English pronunciation of the Hindi word.

Yeah, and it really depends on your transliteration system. An even more accurate spelling might be “bhaaloo” as a single “a” often indicates a schwa when transliterating from Hindi script/Devanagari to the Roman alphabet (and the letter in the Hindi spelling, भालू, shows a vowel that is normally represented as “aa.”) You will notice quite a variation in spelling Hindi words in Roman script in practice.

[KKKK]

@jayjay

Wouldn’t it be more like (and I know this isn’t a precise equivalent) “King Tiger”?

King Tiger or Lord Tiger, yes. So you have Bear the bear and Lord Tiger the tiger.

[KKKK]

@Malacandra

Probably not much point in the exactitude, since “bh” isn’t a spelling that occurs in too many English words and the Anglicised spelling “Baloo” would be an approximation of the English pronunciation of the Hindi word.

The name of this guy, a splendid cricketer and subsequently campaigner for Dalit rights, I have always seen spelled without the h.

And as mentioned above, “Khan” doesn’t mean “tiger” as far as I’m aware.

The other animal I can think of OTTOMH whose name means what animal he is would be Hathi the elephant. (Nag, the villainous snake in Rikki-tikki-tavi, is of course in The Jungle Book but not in the Mowgli continuity.)

Baloo or Balu is a regular Indian name which has nothing to do with bears. Baloo in the Jungle Book is probably (as you said) an English mispronunciation of Bhaloo. Khan doesn’t mean tiger but Sher does. Sher Khan – Lord Tiger?

[mwproto]

@Carpe_beadum

FYI, I taught Middle School (6-8) in central FL (Seminole, FL) during the late 80s and early 90s before the CTBS (Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills) was scrapped for FCAT testing. The CTBS (a one day test) had no demands of test security as we gave the same test EVERY year. The booklets were kept in my cabinet, but not under lock and key. Teachers had to state several seemingly nonsense statements at the start of one section of the CTBS. We were to state them with no inflection or explanation. Then later in the section, students were to find and fill in the blanks from memory. Some of the statements were quite easy for students to remember:

A baloo is a bear.
A younker is a young man.
A teapoy is a stool.
Sculch is junk.

Unfortunately we now have around 35 days of standardized testing and no fun quotes to remember:smack:

Hi Carpe Beadum,
32 years in Middle School :eek:(slow learner) and most likely gave that test 20 times. Sculch is one of my favorite words but the definition in the Urban Dictionary may limit my use. PCSB: Meadowlawn , Azalea , Joseph L Carwise and Thurgood Marshall