The Original Name of the Red Panda: A Surprising History
Sunday, 7 December 2025
This very interesting video is all about the Red Panda and how it got its name. You might think that it was a straightforward process, but that isn’t really the case with beautiful animal which belongs in a class of its own (quite literally). Of course, this tells the story of how it got its English name. And it made me wonder – what do the Chinese call both species of panda? As you will have seen from the video, panda is not a word of Chinese origin. Image Credit
The answer? Well the
Chinese call the giant panda 大熊猫 (dà xióng māo). If we break that down, 大 (dà)
= big, 熊 (xióng) = bear, and 猫 (māo) = cat. So
literally, it means “big bear cat.” That's a beautifully pragmatic name, even if it is scientifically inaccurate (but they probably didn't care about taxonomy). So
what of the red panda? The answer is glorious! 小熊猫 (xiǎo xióng māo), literally means “small
bear cat.” It makes me think that
Chinese is a very sensible language, far more so than English. So one panda is the big bear cat and the other is the small bear cat. Ta da.
I digress – take a look at the video which explains, very
humourously, how the Red Panda got its name (and other assorted facts).
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