You know how in China “Chinese food” is just food?
Did you ever think about how Danish people call the Great Dane in Danish?
First, it is worth mentioning that Great Danes are actually not originally from Denmark. They’re from Germany.
Second by Guinness World Records the tallest dog who ever lived amongst us was a Great Dane named Zeus.
Zeus measured 1.118 meters (44 inches) – When Zeus was standing on his rear legs he reached a staggering 2.23 meters (7 ft 4 inches) tall! this dog should have played in the NBA.
And now, to the moment you were all waiting for, in the Danish language a great dane is a “Granddanois” which means Great Dane, but, in… French.
Wait, what?
Yes, the German dog which has a Danish dog’s name in the Danish language, is actually in French.
Why? well, until 1878 it was named “Englische Dogge” but the Germans would not have it – this is a dog that was mainly bred in Germany by German aristocracy, so they formed a special committee just for that pressing issue and came up with such an original name – from “Englische Dogge” to “Deutsche Dogge” but this was not the end of the story.
Due to “increasing tensions between Germany and other countries” as wikipedia puts it in a very polite way, the world wanted to call this dog in a different name, no committee required.
Thanks to a fancy french dude (with a very long name) “Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon”
Buffon was mainly known for being the father of modern natural history (He wrote a encyclopaedic collection of 36 large volumes written 1755),
As he documented his many travels, in one of them he saw large dogs in Denmark, and named them “grand danois” – Great Dane.
The Danish name stuck – and in Denmark it stuck in Buffon’s original language French.
