Names

12^th November

This evening we reached Ranomafana. The five-day rain has stopped for the time being and the local power cut, which in turn put paid to the water supply, ended just as we arrived. These I take to be good omens for our stay. Tomorrow we make our first foray into the forest, where I hope we will have even greater success than we did on our last tour. This evening, miraculously, I have time to read the pages of notes I scribbled while in the forest with my two wonderful guides in Kirindy earlier in the week.

My guides were Nambina, a young man of twenty from near Antananarivo who had come to Kirindy to learn to be a professional guide with a view to a career in tourism, and Doliste, a man in his forties from the nearest village who had lived all his life in the forest. Nambina belongs to the Merina culture of the highlands. Doliste identifies himself as Tetsaka but broadly belongs to the Sakalava culture of the west; he has had very little school education, and speaks little French (why should he?) but he knows the chip of every bird, the quiver of every leaf and the chirp of each insect. He also breaks readily into a big smile, especially when it occurs to a scrawny westerner to act out the foraging behaviour of a buttonquail.

I like language, I like wildlife and I like people; so wherever I go I jot local names for animals and plants. The following list, for many reasons, doubtless contains numerous errors. I speak no Malagasy, one of my guides and I had no language in common, and the other was a newcomer from another culture. Some of the names I cite below may be wrong, others may be locally inappropriate, still others may apply in only a small area of west Madagascar and, let’s face it, I may have got the wrong end of the stick. Nonetheless, here are some names I was given for plants and animals which my guides and I saw (or in some cases heard) together in the forest.

Malagasy or regional dialect name	English or scientific name
fitatsy	magpie robin
tsararako	broad-billed roller
fony	baobab (in this case Adansonia rubrostipa)
reniala	baobab
fihiaky	harrier hawk
ray lovy	drongo
toloho	coucal
reo reo (meaning: two two)	cuckoo roller (an onomatopoeic rendition of its song)
sianga, voromanga	souimanga sunbird (the latter name may also be used colloquially to mean a pretty girl)
komitsy	jery
fandra	Pandanus screw palm (known in Mantadia as vakona)
katsatsa bato	Karsten’s plated lizard
gidro	lemur (in this case red-fronted brown)
tsidy, tsitsidy	mouse lemur (in this case grey mouse lemur)
tsidy kely	Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (literally: little mouse lemur)
totokafa	lesser cuckoo (an onomatopoeic rendition of its song)
kitsalitsaly	big-eyed grass snake Mimophis mahfalensis
bibilava	snake
lejakely	Coquerel’s coua
lambo	bush pig
kasasaky	skink (in this case Trachylepis elegans)
faroratsy	spider
dangalia	lizard
akora	snail
boenga	red-tailed sportive lemur
katikatiky	common newtonia (an onomatopoeic rendition of its song)
draky	Sakalava weaver
trango draky	weaver nest or colony (literally: the weaver’s house)
soloko	crested coua
siotsy	vasa parrot
akibo	buttonquail
aboaly	termite
sakorova	bulbul
balangetroky	paradise flycatcher
malamasafoy	Delonix decaryi tree
kangamoriky	firebug
bora	cicada
bitapoky	vanga
vitsiky	ant
lavaky vitsiky	ant hole
domohy	turtle dove
bobaky	buzzard
kololiky	butterfly
androngy hazo	iguanid lizard
hazo	tree
bia	caterpillar
tsiba	Coquerel’s giant dwarf lemur
kely be hohy	fat-tailed dwarf lemur (local Kirindy name)
vahinamalona	wild vanilla (Vanilla madagascariensis)
tsyanihimposa	Xanthoxylum decaryi tree (literally, on account of its spikes: fosa can’t climb tree)
kina kina (Sakalava people of west Madagascar), dondozy (Merina people of highlands around Tana)	bat
vontaka	Pachypodium elephant’s foot plant
kily (Sakalava), vomadilo (Merina)	tamarind tree