The anaconda snake is startling in its sheer size. Records contain concrete proof of anaconda snakes that were nearly a dozen meters or about 30 feet long. Of course, unverifiable tall tales narrate anacondas exceeding 40 meters to be out on the prowl in the wilds. Be that as it may, the anacondas enjoy an undisputed brand as the world’s biggest snakes. Yet another relatively innocuous but intriguing aspect of the anaconda snakes pertains to their very name “anaconda”.

So, what’s strange about the name of the anaconda snake? Quite simply, the fact that though anacondas predominantly occur in a certain part of the world, the origin of their name has been traced to the other extreme of the world. To elaborate, anacondas are found in the Amazon basin of South America. Yet their name appears to belong to a little-spoken language of the island-nation of Sri Lanka to the south of India.

It is interesting to ruminate on the likely etymological origin of the name anaconda of this formidable snake. On cursory reflection, two possible origins suggest themselves. The first is that the name was derived from the Tamil word anaikondran, which meant a killer of elephants. The other conjecture has been that the anacondas’ name has been drawn from the Tamil word annaikonda, which means one who has destroyed an elephant. It remains a matter of wonder how the name for a species could originate from a language and a land that is geographically as distant as Sri Lanka is from South America. However, it may be added that local variants of the anaconda snake’s names include the reference in Spain to the anaconda snake as matatoro or a killer of bulls. Besides, the Latin name Eunectes hails from the corresponding Greek name Euvnkcnc, which denotes an excellent swimmer.

The Sri Lankan national language, Sinhala, is spoken by nearly 15 million people. This language belongs to the Indo-Aryan family, together with Hindi and Urdu. The English language seems to contain only one more word from Sinhala. This word is ambarella, denoting a deciduous tree with an edible fruit. Boa constrictor snakes do exist in Sri Lanka. However, the boas of Asia have for decades been referred to as pythons, after a mythical Greek monster.  Hence, how and why the anacondas of South America came to be so named remains a matter of speculation and debate.

A plausible sequence of events resulting in the anaconda snakes being so christened occurs in the Oxford English Dictionary. Quite simply, it holds that the name was used for snakes from Ceylon {the former name of Sri Lanka}. It cites European museum records of the 17th century to state that initially at least, anacondas merely referred to snakes got from Ceylon, and literally meant a creature who squashed the bodies of buffaloes. By the dawn of the 19th century, however, the term began to be employed inexplicably and indiscriminately for the boas of South America. One might well conclude this with a poetic salute to the size of the anaconda snake, by rephrasing the famous poem lines as follows:

“What is in a name?
For that we call an anaconda
By any other name
Would remain as large.”

To watch real life anacondas in action, doing the wierdest jobs, move over to our anaconda videos section where we have assembled a huge collection of exclusive anaconda videos.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!