Call that big fellow a Buffalo, and everyone will know what you mean. Park rangers and a few pedantic jerks eager to display their superior knowledge may try to explain that it is an American Bison and that Buffalo are native to Southeast Asia, but who cares?
It is a Buffalo, and calling it one is valid because that’s what they have been called for the last two centuries, and because everyone recognizes and understands the term.
Word definitions become valid through general use and acceptance. If everyone had called the Buffalo a Periwinkle or a Proctologist (and everyone understood what you were talking about) the name would be just as legitimate.
A true purist might call the Buffalo by their Sioux name, Tatanka. The Sioux, after all, were the greatest Buffalo hunters before the arrival of gun powder, and they had hunted the Takanta long before Europeans arrived.
Even Sioux is a misnomer – it is the French bastardization of an Algonquin term that means “little snakes” – they called themselves the Lakota.
I suppose you could claim that I am arguing that if you say something wrong often enough, and long enough, it becomes right. You might have a point, but my main contention is that definitions are validated through usage.
Besides, Houston’s Buffalo Bayou just wouldn’t sound as appealing if it were called Bison Creek, and Home On The Range doesn’t ring true if the singer longs for a home where the Bison roam. It just doesn’t work.
So, please don’t try to correct me if I call it a Buffalo. That’s what it is – deal with it.
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