The Name Penguin Belonged to Another Bird First

A penguin is a flightless seabird that swims with its wings. The name has an odd history: it belonged first to the great auk, a large flightless bird of the North Atlantic, now extinct. Sailors reaching the southern oceans saw similar-looking birds and reused the word. One explanation traces it to Welsh *pen gwyn*, white head, though the derivation is disputed.

• A flightless southern seabird. *An emperor penguin.*
• Penguin in comparisons. *Waddling like a penguin.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• Emperor penguins breed through the Antarctic winter.The males incubate the egg on their feet.
• Penguins live only in the southern hemisphere.Except the Galápagos penguin, which just crosses the equator.
• The colony holds thousands of birds.Colony or rookery.

Penguin facts

• Eighteen or so species — the exact count is debated
• Wings are flippers — solid bone, for swimming not flying
• Countershading — dark above and pale below, camouflage in water
• Huddling — emperors rotate through the huddle to share warmth
• No Arctic penguins — none live in the north; that is where the auks were

First recorded in the sixteenth century for the great auk. The Welsh explanation, *pen gwyn* meaning white head, is often repeated but not proved; other suggestions include Latin *pinguis*, fat.