In Skunks We Trust

December 15, 2022 2:43 PM

I'm wanting to make a flag for our backyard, where we get a lot of nocturnal visitors passing through - skunks, opossums, raccoons mostly. To make it super fancy I'd like to add a motto in Latin, or if not a motto, something like "Skunk Island" or "Critter Sanctuary." I don't know Latin. Can anyone help me?
posted by queensissy to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

PS - striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis) and Virginia opossums (Didelphis virginiana)
posted by queensissy at 2:45 PM on December 15, 2022

twist on the old 'know thyself':

nosce te ipsum --> nosce te possum
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:29 PM on December 15, 2022

Luckily, there is a word in Latin that might describe all the fauna you want in your backyard, and that is... um, fauna. Fauna is basically a Roman ripoff of Pan. But her name has grown to mean "the animal kingdom" and often in Latin the god/goddess for something is used in place of the thing the deity represents.

So, my first try at a motto might be:

in nocte floreat Fauna

"In the night, let Fauna (the animals) flourish."

You can put "in nocte" "floreat" and "Fauna" in any order you like, the raccoons won't care. (And for pronounciation purposes, noct-eh is two syllables and floreat is three syllables, floor-ee-at)
posted by rpophessagr at 9:58 PM on December 15, 2022

And the plural of skunks must be MeFites. Cave mefites callidia. Beware the cunning skunks. Someone who actually knows Latin can correct the case ending for callidus.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:22 AM on December 16, 2022

Neither skunks nor opossums are native to the Eurasian continent, so the ancient Romans wouldn't really have had words for them specifically. In Latin, "mephitis" literally means "sulfurous gases from underground", and "didelphis" means "having a double womb" (because they're marsupials, you see.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:41 AM on December 16, 2022

rpophessagr, I really love that. It captures the mood.
posted by queensissy at 3:13 PM on December 16, 2022