Beetles, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Korean Shamans

[samedi]

Comments

[i_phianassa]

I guess I know the French name derived from the Latin: coccinelle. I've never heard it called bête à bon Dieu

[samedi]

I noticed that variations of coccinelle come up in other Romance languages - French, Aragonés, Italian, Castillian Spanish - as well as in Czech and Welsh. Wikipedia says that it's "God's cow" in Breton, Welsh, and a bunch of Dutch dialects, so maybe one of the northern Langues d'oïl is where bête à bon Dieu comes from? It would seem to fit within a continuum stretching from Bretagne to les Pays-Bas, anyway.

(15-20 minutes later ...)

Seems the Musée de Zoologie Lausanne has a page up calling them bête à bon Dieu ... does this mean we have la Suisse romande to thank for that expression? I don't know enough about the Arpitan language or Franc-Comtois dialects to make an informed guess about either coining the phrase.

[i_phianassa]

And I know even less than you do, so I shan't be venturing a guess!

[samedi]

But it's more fun if I'm not the only one proposing tenuously-supported theories! ;)

[laynamarya]

Cool!

I guess I was wrong about the relation to Ladybird Johnson, but that's okay. It's still interesting to find out!

[samedi]

*smacks forehead*

I completely forgot we had that discussion over the weekend! Sorry, Layna!