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Friday, April 01, 2005

The fifth Kiore

Until about 10 minutes ago I knew 3 meanings of 'Kiore', and was dimly aware that there was something unknown in Korean that looked like "Kio Re".

The ones I knew

  • The New Zealand Rat
  • in the Manx Language, it's the word for "four"
  • Somewhere in Albania is the town of Kiore
Today when browsing I found in the ICUN Red List of Threatened Species that Hippocampus abdominalis, the big or pot-belly seahorse, is sometimes known, in New Zealand, as "Kiore".

A Google search found 12 entries, one gives the Maori Kiore-waitai.

As pre-European Maori didn't have the horse, saying it looked to them like a rat makes sense.

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