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# The etymology of “penguin”
- URL: https://linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/penguin/
- Published: 2025-04-04T01:37:09.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-23T21:25:43.000Z
- Description: Where does the word “penguin” come from? French, Welsh, or Latin?
- Author: Daniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.
- Tags: Newsletter, etymology, Welsh, French

Why does the word *pingouin* refer to auks in French while the word *penguin* refers to penguins in English?

To answer this, we need some etymology! So like the penguins, let’s dive in.

First, as mentioned, the French word *pingouin* doesn’t refer to penguins. It refers to a similar-looking bird of the northern hemisphere called the [auk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auk?ref=linguisticdiscovery.com). (Auks and penguins are not part of the same family of species. Auks live in the northern hemisphere, while penguins live in the southern hemisphere.)

The word for ‘penguin’ in French is *manchot*, literally ‘no-armed’, from the Latin *mancus* ‘maimed, crippled, handicapped’.

Why the discrepancy between the English and the French meanings of *penguin*/*pingouin*? Because the English word used to refer to the ‘auk’ too! The word waddled its way into French (after nesting with Dutch for a bit) before the shift in meaning.

Why did the English word *penguin* change its meaning? For starters, the great auks of Newfoundland, who were the original bearers of the name *penguin*, went extinct by 1844\. Secondly, British sailors likely just applied the name *penguin* to the similar-looking Antarctic birds when they first encountered them.

If French got the word from English, then where did the English word *penguin* come from?

Our best guess is that it comes from the Welsh words *pen* ‘head’ + *gwyn* ‘white’, either in reference to the auk’s white head, or in reference to White Head Island (*Pen Gwyn* in Welsh) in Newfoundland where the birds lived.

Like the penguins themselves, however, this theory has never really gotten off the ground, because we have no historical documentation of a transition from Welsh *pen-gwyn* to English *penguin*. Plus, the /g/ of *gwyn* would typically be lost in compounds, so if *penguin* really did come from a compounding of *pen* and *gwyn*, the result should have been *penwyn*. On the other hand, if the name comes from the Welsh name for White Head Island, *Pen Gwyn*, the sound change wouldn’t have applied.

If *penguin* does come from Welsh, though, that would make it related to the name *Gwendolyn*, literally ‘white-haired’ or ‘fair-haired’.

The only other potential etymology for *penguin* worth squawking about is that it might derive from the Latin *pinguis* ‘fat’. Some additional evidence for this proposal is that the German and Dutch words for ‘penguin’ are also attentive to its blubbery disposition: German *fettgans* ‘fat-goose’ and its Dutch cognate *vetgans*. But this Latin origin wouldn’t explain why the English word ends in an /n/.

So there you have it. Having slipped gracefully beneath the surface of the etymological waters, we surface with our catch of new knowledge—but are still no less certain of its origin.

The complete (putative) etymological flowchart for *penguin* is below.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c7/75/c775a216-7ca2-4c5f-96a7-f2defe0fd756/content/images/2026/04/carousel-1.png)

## 📑 Bibliography

- Chambers dictionary of etymology: *penguin*
- [Etymonline: penguin](https://www.etymonline.com/word/penguin?ref=linguisticdiscovery.com)
- [OED: penguin](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/penguin%5Fn?tab=factsheet&ref=linguisticdiscovery.com#31064504)
- [Wikipedia: penguin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/penguin?ref=linguisticdiscovery.com)