The name “giraffe”
The name “giraffe” has its earliest known origins in the Arabic word zarāfah (زرافة),[2] perhaps borrowed from the animal’s Somali name geri.[3] The Arab name is translated as “fast-walker”.[4] In early Modern English the spellings jarraf and ziraph were used, probably directly from the Arabic,[5] and in Middle English orafle and gyrfaunt, gerfaunt. The Italian form giraffa arose in the 1590s. The modern English form developed around 1600 from the French girafe.[2]
“Camelopard” /kəˈmɛləˌpɑːrd/ is an archaic English name for the giraffe; it derives from the Ancient Greek καμηλοπάρδαλις (kamēlopárdalis), from κάμηλος (kámēlos), “camel”, and πάρδαλις (párdalis), “leopard”, referring to its camel-like shape and leopard-like colouration.[6][7]
Taxonomy
Living giraffes were originally classified as one species by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. He gave it the binomial name Cervus camelopardalis. Morten Thrane Brünnich classified the genus Giraffa in 1762.[8] The species name camelopardalis is from Latin.[9]
Evolution
Ruminantia
Tragulina
Tragulidae Tragulus napu – 1818-1842 – Print – Iconographia Zoologica – Special Collections University of Amsterdam – (white background).jpg
Pecora
Antilocapridae Antilocapra white background.jpg
Giraffidae Giraffa camelopardalis Brockhaus white background.jpg
Cervidae The deer of all lands (1898) Hangul white background.png
Bovidae Birds and nature (1901) (14562088237) white background.jpg
Moschidae Moschus chrysogaster white background.jpg
Cladogram based on a 2003 study by Hassanin and Douzery.[10]
The giraffe is one of only two living genera of the family Giraffidae in the order Artiodactyla, the other being the okapi. The family was once much more extensive, with over 10 fossil genera described. Their closest known relatives may have been the extinct deer-like climacocerids. They, together with the family Antilocapridae (whose only extant species is the pronghorn), have been placed in the superfamily Giraffoidea. These animals may have evolved from the extinct family Palaeomerycidae which might also have been the ancestor of deer.[11]
