and in china, the browser is named “Huo Hu” (the characters you pasted, which indeed translates to firefox). The actual red panda is called “Xiao Xiong Mao” or “小熊猫” in china, which literally translates to “little panda” (or “red panda” if put into google translate).
so 火狐 means firefox, an alias/nickname for the red panda
and 小熊猫 means red panda, the actual animal
yeah, it’s a nickname for it, and I wasn’t quick enough on my edit to fix that before your reply, but if you pop in the two terms into an image search engine, you’ll see 火狐 is not literally red panda in chinese, but 小熊猫 is all red pandas.
Firefox, the browser, was originally named after a red panda
Actually, it was originally named Phoenix. Then they changed it to Firebird to avoid infringing on the Phoenix BIOS company’s trademark, then they changed it to Firefox because there was already a database program named Firebird.
Ackchyually, Phoenix was named such because it rose from the ashes of Netscape Navigator. and I’m sure some internet historian is able to come along and go further back than that, but going through the entire genealogy of the name firefox wasn’t inside the scope of what I was originally ackchyually’ing.
I can see how me saying “originally” can be seen as going all the way back, but what was meant by that is the original intent of only the name firefox, specifically - using mozilla’s own words, and if you clicked on my link to the mozilla archive, they bring up it being similar to firebird, too. But again, it was outside what I was commenting on.
It was just so a meme doesn’t make people go around confusing anyone fluent in chinese that we’re getting it wrong about them, but this is just a trivially small corner of the internet, and it’s going to happen regardless, anyways; it’s too fun of an idea to pass up, like how I see being passed around that the chinese call owls “sky cats” when it ended up being “cat (head/bald) eagle”.
looked it up, seems it was a misunderstanding. Firefox, the browser, was originally named after a red panda (https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/firefox-name-faq.html)
and in china, the browser is named “Huo Hu” (the characters you pasted, which indeed translates to firefox). The actual red panda is called “Xiao Xiong Mao” or “小熊猫” in china, which literally translates to “little panda” (or “red panda” if put into google translate).
so 火狐 means firefox, an alias/nickname for the red panda
and 小熊猫 means red panda, the actual animal
yeah, it’s a nickname for it, and I wasn’t quick enough on my edit to fix that before your reply, but if you pop in the two terms into an image search engine, you’ll see 火狐 is not literally red panda in chinese, but 小熊猫 is all red pandas.
I came across it when I saw a reddit comment from a chinese person stating the correction: https://web.archive.org/web/20230604172848/https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3nof72/til_that_the_red_panda_is_firefox_in_chinese/ (or can copy/paste everything after old.reddit if you don’t care about the data tracking, for the faster page load)
Actually, it was originally named Phoenix. Then they changed it to Firebird to avoid infringing on the Phoenix BIOS company’s trademark, then they changed it to Firefox because there was already a database program named Firebird.
Ackchyually, Phoenix was named such because it rose from the ashes of Netscape Navigator. and I’m sure some internet historian is able to come along and go further back than that, but going through the entire genealogy of the name firefox wasn’t inside the scope of what I was originally ackchyually’ing.
I can see how me saying “originally” can be seen as going all the way back, but what was meant by that is the original intent of only the name firefox, specifically - using mozilla’s own words, and if you clicked on my link to the mozilla archive, they bring up it being similar to firebird, too. But again, it was outside what I was commenting on.
It was just so a meme doesn’t make people go around confusing anyone fluent in chinese that we’re getting it wrong about them, but this is just a trivially small corner of the internet, and it’s going to happen regardless, anyways; it’s too fun of an idea to pass up, like how I see being passed around that the chinese call owls “sky cats” when it ended up being “cat (head/bald) eagle”.
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