whale

[potetjp]

There is no word for "whale" (# 232) in the majority of the languages listed
in _Lexique thématique plurilingue de trente-six langues et dialectes d'Asie
du Sud-Est Insulaire_, Paris: L'Harmattan (1997).
The 11 terms entered are:
MALAY WORLD
Bugis: pausu?, tampausu?
Moken: ekan nani
Sama Sitangkay: kahumbu
Sama Sulsel: basisou
Malaysian: tempaus
Indonesian: (ikan) paus
PHILIPPINES
Hanunoo-Mangyan: duyong
Maguindanao: kumbo
Tagalog: dambuhála?
FORMOSA
Yami: amumubu (father of flying fish)
Puyuma: buaya

1) Query: do you know other terms for "whale"?

2) Sharing of opinion. What do you think of the following "confusions"?
The Hanunoo-Mangyan term - duyong - is the same for "whale" and "manatee".
Although both sea mammals, this confusion is strange.
Even stranger is the Puyuma term - buaya - because it means "crocodile" is
many other languages.
To refer to crocodiles, the Puyumas use a Japanese loanword _wani_  (Liste:
# 262) < Jap. _wani_ (Nelson (1969): _The modern reader's Japanese-English
character dictionary_: # 5317).
I suppose Japanese traders bought crododile skins (Jap. _wanigawa_) from the
Puyumas so that the Japanese term _wani_ was substituted to the native term
for "crocodile", now lost.
Incidentally Jap. _wanizame_ "shark" is derived from  _wani_ "crocodile"
(ibid); _same > -zame_ (Nelson #5294) means "shark".
_Kodansha's furigana English-Japanese dictionary_ (1994) translates "shark"
by _same- and _fuka_ (cf. Nelson # 5337), so I conclude _wani_ is now
obsolete and that the trade I was referring took place when Formosa was
Japanese, unless ancient and dating back to the Middle-Ages.
Jean-Paul G. POTET