On Cats and Butterflies?
Near the start of last week Gord Sellar wrote a post of a few questions that had come to mind recently. While I was unable to offer any help involving shower practices in Korea, the questions concerning cats and cat-naming habits in Joseon-era Korea (1392-1910) were not only very interesting but also an area where I felt like I could add to the discussion. (Imagine that!) To quote from Gord's original entry:
The first thing I’m wondering about is the cat name “나비.” (For those of you not living here in Korea, the stereotype name for a cat is 나비. The Korean word for butterfly is the same.) I’m wondering:
- Is the name actually butterfly, or just a homophone? (I’m pretty sure it’s the former, but I wanted to check.)
- Are many cats actually named 나비 these days? Or is it like with the name “Fido” for dogs in English, a name we almost never actually see used, but which is the stereotype name for that animal, perhaps because it was at some point more common?
- How far back is 나비 a stereotyped name for a cat? Was the name either stereotypical or in use during the late Joseon Dynasty? Any idea how far back the name was used for cats, or was stereotypical for cats? (ie. Do you know if there is an old literary reference to a cat named that way?)
My response ... (for anyone who hasn't already read it on the original entry)
"고양이가 나비와 노는 그림" by 김홍도 (1745-1806?)
Having been to the Gansong Art Museum a few times I immediately thought of the above picture by Kim Hong-do. With not much time to fact-check and respond before going to work I put off commenting until I came home later that evening. However, while at work I did take the opportunity to ask my coworkers what they knew about the association between the names -- which turned out to be a bit less than expected. Our academy's vice-director attributed it to something passed down from earlier generations ("our grandfathers' grandfathers' grandfathers' grandfathers") and then took a guess that it had to do with cats and butterflies sharing flittering movements -- i.e., not moving in a straight line.
Asking a coworker resulted in a similar answer, phrased to suggest that the custom comes from an association that was originally made many, many years ago and that many (most?) people no longer knew how it began. I was tempted to ask a few of my other coworkers but it's always difficult to get them alone to ask questions. Yes, it is possible to ask them as a single group, but that leads to the possibility of everyone agreeing to the same answer or thinking that I'm too persistent by asking the same question a number of times.
After coming home from work that night I looked up "김홍도 나비" on Google and came up with this result from Nate Q&A -- which is also my source for the Kim Hong-do painting. The site includes a bit of information about the piece, with this line in particular catching my attention:
"고양이가 나비와 노는 그림"은 생신 축하 선물이다. 중국어로 고양이 묘(猫)는 칠십 노인 모(모), 나비 접(蝶)은 팔십 노인 질(질) 자와 발음이 같다.
I wasn't entirely sure about my translation on Gord's site, but thankfully Gomushin Girl added a comment later to say that it was pretty close to the mark. And what does the line from Nate say? The first sentence mentions that the painting was presented as a birthday present and the second is a comment about the name. It seems the association originally comes from Chinese, where the character and pronunciation of 'cat' is similar to how one refers to an elderly person at 70 years of age and 'butterfly' is similar to how one refers to an elderly person at 80 years of age. To add a little more, courtesy of Gomushin Girl's comment:
[T]here’s lots of pictorial evidence of cats in Joseon Korean - 화재 (변상벽) was particularly well known for painting them, even earning the nickname 병고양이. At any rate, when Koreans use 나비 for cats, they do in fact mean the word “butterfly” - it’s not a homophone in Korean for anything else (well, the same sounds also mean a bolt of cloth, but I think we can safely assume that’s not how they mean it.) While I have heard of people naming their cats “Nabi” it is most often analagous to our use of “Fido” in English as a name that applies to any dog, and substitutes if we don’t know the individual dogs name.
"묘접도" by 변상벽 (Source)
I learned some very interesting information on account of Gord's question and Gomushin Girl's response. In addition to that, it was also very exciting to find that my very limited knowledge of Korean art history and language skills could be applied toward answering the original question. Our vice-director found the back-story to be rather interesting as well; considering how she's the person who introduced me to the Gansong Art Museum in the first place I have her to thank for what knowledge I do have on the subject!