Fallow Deer - it gets worse

[Robert Orr]

Steve Long:

>>> Consider, for example, that when English speakers came to America, they
>>> impliedly misppplied the very deer names mentioned above ......  Anyone
>>> familiar with these two types of deer, not just in appearance but also in
>>> terms of what they output, will know how big a miscue this was.  What is
>>> striking here is that IE speakers were giving animals they were supposedly
>>> already quite familiar with completely opposite names.

There's a more recent, and illustrative, example from settlement in
Australia.  The Tasmanian Wolf and the mysterious Queensland marsupial tger
are less closely related to wolves and tigers than humans are (and one might
note that the earliest settlers probably only knew wolves from fairy tales,
rather than as a real animal, let alone the tigers)

Cf. the folksong (all of which I do not remember)

"... wolves and tigers upon Van Diemen's land"

Robert Orr