In German, the harbor seal is actually called “Seehund”, sea dog, though I think it has more to do with the sounds they make than with their appearance.
Proximam ei Canariam vocari a multitudine canum ingentis magnitudinis ex quibus perducti sunt Jubas duo
Pliny, Natural History VI.205
Translation (from The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Natural History of Pliny, Volume II., by Pliny the Elder.)
“The one next to it is Canaria; it contains vast multitudes of dogs of very large size, two of which were brought home to Juba”
The word for dogs here is canum ingentis, lit. “of dogs” + genitive of characteristic (I think) of ingēns, “huge” / “enormous”—so they might be mastiffs, but they could be any large breed.
It is possibly to distinguish between “seal” and “dog” in Latin, so it seems strange that a passage that is really specific (in the next sentence, he mentions silūrōs, “sheatfish”), he wouldn’t say.
I’ve imagined a story about a race of uplifted dogs in space, who call their homeworld and center of their interstellar federation “Cynosure” for doubly-appropriate reasons.
Read it in a book recently. But it’ll take a few days to find the quote (and of course it may not be authoritative).
Speaking of dogs…
peninkulma: A Finnish unit of measurement, about six km, which was originally “the length at which a dog’s bark could be heard.” (Source: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants, by James Vincent, page 13.)
Finnish also gave us “poronkusema”, the distance a reindeer can travel without stopping to urinate.
@Dr.Drake, Thanks for locating and translating that text.
I agree. The Presa Canario is endemic to the Canary Islands. Although it’s described as being similar to a mastiff, it
was particularly influenced by dogs brought from the British Isles with the large influx of British residents in the late nineteenth century.
Well, the one translator tool does not handle that word very well, yielding “angle of the penis”.
But you know sometimes words have two meanings
Now we know why the dog is barking and can be heard for 6 km.
Are you sure the Finns aren’t just having the rest of the world on?
That’s what I think the Swedes are doing whenever I go to an Ikea.
One of my dachshunds looked just like a seal when her ears were held back.
Not to forget the Seewolf and the Seelöwe (sea wolf and sea lion, same as in English), both conforming the Otariidae:
An eared seal, otariid, or otary is any member of the marine mammal family Otariidae, one of three groupings of pinnipeds. They comprise 15 extant species in seven genera (another species became extinct in the 1950s) and are commonly known either as sea lions or fur seals, distinct from true seals (phocids) and the walrus (odobenids).
Judging by their names I wonder what sounds they make.
I’ve never heard of a sea wolf but there are sea lions and elephant seals.
What about sea bees?
Not even the novel?
Also sea horses and leopard seals.
How come we don’t have any prairie fish or shark deer?
Well, we do have prairie oysters. And percherons. And, some of us, who shall not be named, crabs.
And land sea lions according to Fry
not to mention, Dr. Zoiderg