Comments on: How do you say Melissa in _______?

Question: How do you say Melissa in _______?

mds35 — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:10:22 -0800

How do you say honey bee in __________? I'm in need of translations of "honey bee" in every language I can find. If you speak another language, please do help!

My wife's name is Melissa, which means "honey bee." We have son whose middle name is a sly reference to his father. We'd like our next child to have a middle name that refers to his/her mother and are hoping that in some tongue or other, the word for honey bee sounds good as a name without being too similar to Melissa.

By: phredgreen

phredgreen — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:20:00 -0800

A nifty trick I've found is to look something up on Wikipedia.

You have a whole bunch of languages to choose from in the sidebar on the left, and clicking on each one will show you that particular language's translation of the word.

By: saladin

saladin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:36:41 -0800

The German is "Honigbiene." That's a feminine noun, so "Die Honigbiene" for "the honeybee."

By: nicolas léonard sadi carnot

nicolas léonard sadi carnot — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:39:19 -0800

Melissa just means "very sweet", it's the superlative form of mel, "sweet". The word in Latin for honey bee is "apis".

By: nicolas léonard sadi carnot

nicolas léonard sadi carnot — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:43:35 -0800

AND UPON FURTHER READING: I'm wrong, Zeus apparently transmuted some Greek girl named Melissa into a bee!

By: thisisnotkatrina

thisisnotkatrina — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:50:58 -0800

if you google honeybee, and go over on the top right to [definition], it will link you to an answers.com page with several translations. (scroll down)

By: Stacey

Stacey — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:53:49 -0800

Zeus transmuted a whole lot of Greek girls into a whole lot of things. If the "honey bee" idea doesn't work out (but I hope it does, because it's cute!), you could always start looking at the long list of other girls Zeus transmogrified.

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:00:54 -0800

Swedish is Tambi which is kind of name-y.

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:04:32 -0800

In Chinese it's 蜜蜂 mìfēng.

By: barrakuda

barrakuda — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:12:33 -0800

In Polish it's 'pszczoła' pronounced 'pshtchowah'
In French it's 'abeille' pronounced 'ah-bay'

By: Gordion Knott

Gordion Knott — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:15:27 -0800

In Japanese, 蜜蜂(mitsubachi).

Same characters as the Chinese but a different pronunciation.

By: vers

vers — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:41:52 -0800

Welsh is often under-reported, so I offer gwenynen.

By: belladonna

belladonna — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:47:21 -0800

Deborah is bee in Hebrew. Here's a list of other insect-related names.

By: gadha

gadha — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:48:31 -0800

Swahili is nyuki
Punjabi is shahd di makkhi

By: Andorinha

Andorinha — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:25:01 -0800

Abelha in Portuguese
Ape del Miele in Italian (you might not want to use that one!)
Abeja in Spanish
Honigbiene in German

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:29:37 -0800

In Finnish: mehiläinen

By: bru

bru — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:34:07 -0800

French: abeille

By: carabiner

carabiner — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:41:26 -0800

nicolas léonard sadi carnot is only half right about the translation of honey bee in Latin: it's actually apis mellifera. The genus Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera is Greek from meli- "honey" + ferre "to carry" - hence the scientific name means "honey-carrying bee". This is technically wrong, since honey bees carry nectar and produce honey. However, the name was coined in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus who in a subsequent publication tried to correct it to Apis mellifica ("honey-making bee").

yes, it's nitpicky, but i studied apiculture, ok? :)

By: thisisnotkatrina

thisisnotkatrina — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:53:19 -0800

ps this is a cute idea, and i'm fond of the portuguese version (pronounced a-bale-ya).

By: czechmate

czechmate — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:00:23 -0800

In Czech: Včela (the č is pronounced ch)

By: carabiner

carabiner — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:02:07 -0800

And since Amharic is not widely mentioned, I'll throw in a few translations. An added bonus for considering Amharic is that Ethiopia is known as "the land of bread and honey".

nebe is the word for bee. (pronounced nəbə)
mar is the word for honey.

By: phredgreen

phredgreen — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:10:08 -0800

Personally, I'm inclined toward the Esparanto: Mielabelo

By: sveskemus

sveskemus — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:14:35 -0800

In Danish it's honningbi. But I've yet to hear anybody not refer to a honeybee simply as a bi which means bee.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:22:05 -0800

The Internet says it's "Erlea" in Basque.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:30:06 -0800

And "Zegii" in Mongolian, stress on second syllable (ze-GEE).

By: j

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:42:35 -0800

swedish : honungbi

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:23:34 -0800

Cebuano: Buyog or Butyukan
Tagalog: Bubuyog

By: nicolas léonard sadi carnot

nicolas léonard sadi carnot — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:25:56 -0800

that's the scientific name, which is yes, from latin, but joe caesar would just say "apis".

By: BuddhaInABucket

BuddhaInABucket — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:59:36 -0800

Farsi: "zamboor asal" is the full "honey bee" but we just say "Zamboor". Looks like this: زنبور عسل

By: suedehead

suedehead — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:05:00 -0800

Korean: 꿀벌: literally 'honey bee': it's pronounced ggool-buhl.

By: Flunkie

Flunkie — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:18:17 -0800

Apis mellifera is merely one species of honeybee, not honeybees in general. It's the Western honeybee, a.k.a. the European honeybee, which, while probably the type of honeybee that most of us are likely to be familiar with, is not the only type of honeybee.

The genus "Apis" is "honeybees" (not "bees"). The general "bees" is actually multiple levels up from genus; they are arranged in nine separate families within the superfamily Apoidea.

By: k8t

k8t — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:26:30 -0800

Armenian: մեղվի - meghvi

By: lemuria

lemuria — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:28:33 -0800

Behind the Name lists both Deborah and Erlea as meaning "bee". They're usually pretty accurate, but I would double-check them before actually naming the kid.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:46:58 -0800

Russian: пчела (p'chel-AH)

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:53:52 -0800

(Needless to say, you should not name your child that.)

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:54:25 -0800

(Unless you give him/her a Klingon first name.)

By: Dee Xtrovert

Dee Xtrovert — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:32:13 -0800

Bee is "méh" in Hungarian, and honeybee is two words ("mézelő méh), but as others have noted, Melissa does not actually mean "honeybee."

In Romanian, it's "albină." They don't have a special word for honeybee that I know of.

By: brautigan

brautigan — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:39:47 -0800

Seillean - Gaelic (Scottish) for Honeybee.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:09:46 -0800

Abeille in French is tha same as "bee" in English. Honeybee specifically is une abeille à miel. Less common is une avette or a little more poetically une mouche de miel.

By: buka

buka — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:36:23 -0800

In Latvian it's "medus bite," which is literally honey bee. The "bite" is pronounced like the German for please ("Bit- teh"). A dimunutive of bee is bitīte (pronounced "bit-tee-teh"), which is cute.

By: rob511

rob511 — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:10:41 -0800

Call her ee-BAY!

By: phrontist

phrontist — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:34:13 -0800

If you look at the "in other languages" box on the wikipedia entry, you'll get quite a few.

By: davar

davar — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:35:37 -0800

In Dutch it is honingbij. But everybody just calls them bij (sort of pronounced bi), which means bee.

By: mnsc

mnsc — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:54:59 -0800

A more correct Swedish translation is: honungsbi. But that's not name material anyway so...

By: divabat

divabat — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:55:50 -0800

In Malay it's "lebah madu" though everyone says "lebah" because we don't know of any other "lebah"s that don't make "madu", so to speak.

By: mnsc

mnsc — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:56:27 -0800

Armenian: մեղվի - meghvi

meghvi - Megan (Meggie)?

By: keep it tight

keep it tight — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:13:24 -0800

I believe in Klingon it's Sta Glok which means warrior in flight.

By: rossmik

rossmik — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:17:55 -0800

Deseret but it's very Mormon.

By: thewittyname

thewittyname — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:41:24 -0800

It is laywan in Tagalog

By: mds35

mds35 — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:54:30 -0800

Thanks, guys. This is great stuff. Keep'em coming!

By: No-sword

No-sword — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:17:34 -0800

I have kasoya or soya for Ainu but I didn't record which dialect it was or any kind of honeybee/bee/wasp/etc. distinction. E-mail me if you like the sound and want me to look into it more.

I understand that hachaa is the Okinawan version of Japanese hachi, but that seems to be missing the "honey" part (mitsu, as can be seen in GordionKnott's answer), so it probably also means "wasp" or "hornet".

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:17:03 -0800

A friend from Fujian tells me they call them pang-ah (my half-arsed phonetic rendering) in their particular strand of Hokkien.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 23:32:02 -0800

Icelandic: Býfluga (pronounced, roughly: BEE-fluh-ga)

By: k8t

k8t — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:37:00 -0800

I'm no linguist, but all of this Me/mi stuff is very interesting...

By: forwebsites

forwebsites — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:36:26 -0800

In Hindi and Urdu :
It's called "Madhu Makkhi" or "Shahad ki Makkhi"

Shahad = Honey
Makkhi = Bee

By: Snoogylips

Snoogylips — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:44:59 -0800

I like the idea of using the name Honey. Its unique and would have meaning related to mother Melissa. Spanish for Honey is Miel.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:56:05 -0800

Here's what the internet told me:

Arabic: نَحْلة الخَلِيَّه (I may be wrong but looks to me like "naHla(t) alXhalyya")
Chinese (Simplified): 蜜蜂
Chinese (Traditional): 蜜蜂
Czech: včela
Danish: honningbi
Dutch: honingbij
Estonian: mesilane
Finnish: mehiläinen
French: abeille
German: die Honigbiene
Greek: μέλισσα
Hungarian: mézelő méh
Icelandic: hunangsfluga
Indonesian: lebah madu
Italian: ape
Japanese: みつ蜂
Korean: 꿀벌
Latvian: medus bite
Lithuanian: bitė darbininkė
Norwegian: honningbie
Polish: pszczoła miodonośna
Portuguese (Brazil): abelha
Portuguese (Portugal): abelha
Romanian: albină
Russian: пчела медоносная
Slovak: včela
Slovenian: čebela delavka
Spanish: abeja
Swedish: bi
Turkish: bal arısı

By: mds35

mds35 — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:14:23 -0800

You guys are great. It we have a girl at some point, the Basque and Scots Gael are our choices.

By: mds35

mds35 — Sat, 03 May 2008 06:52:04 -0800

So...it's a boy! Thanks anyway, everyone! Your answers were great.

His name is Noah Ansson, after his mother, whose middle name is Anne.

His brother's middle name is Tennyson, after his father, whose middle name is Dennis.