By Ranjana S.
Ranging from a jumbo jet to a jumbo
ice-cream, the informal term jumbo in recent times is used to express anything
uncharacteristically mammoth in size. The word drew its inception in English,as
a name to refer to an elephant in the same way that Polly refers to a parrot.
The original Jumbo was a mammoth African
elephant, popular with kids, that was caged in a London zoo a century ago, and
then was shipped to America by the renowned circus-owner and showman Phineas
T.Barnum.
The question arises, why was “Jumbo the
elephant" called Jumbo in the first place? This will be difficult to
answer. He was transported to England at the age of four from the zoo in Paris,
bartering a rhinoceros. He was born in the wilderness of Africa rather than in
the captivity in France. However, where was he christened
"Jumbo"....in Africa, France, or England?
According to a recent biography of Jumbo,
he was named by the superintendent of the London zoo, Abraham Deo Barlett: the
theory says he simply took the second element of the African term
Mumbo-Jumbo-the first element, Mumbo, he gave as a name to a gorilla in the
zoo.
In English Mumbo-Jumbo refers to
"nonsense", or an irrelevant and incomprehensible explanations,
drawing on senses related to African pagan religion, referred to witchdoctors,
or an idol. The jumbo-elephant may have come from a West African word for a
"God" or a "spirit", nzambi or zumbi, also the origin of
the word zombie.
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