When people ask the brown bunny's name, the answer is "Bunya".
And then we are asked, "What does it mean? Where did it come from?"
Well, to us, it didn't mean anything except for that sweet, incredibly soft, frequently shedding, cinnamon bunny that appeared in our basement one afternoon (our daughter bought him "on sale" at a pet store).
The name was the result of some errant spark of electricity across a brain synapse that was attempting to make a nonsense name of the word "bunny". Mangle that in some fashion and you get our "Bunya".
Since then, we have discovered Bunya elsewhere...
In Australia, there is a Bunya tree, also called a Bunya Pine. This tree has some SERIOUS pine cones.
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| Pineapple dwarfed by a Bunya pine cone |
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| Yeah, you don't want to be bonked on the head by a Bunya pine cone, and it won't send you a postcard or beep before it hits you (according to the sign - there's no notice) |
... the Bunya Mountains,
... the Bunya suburb northwest of Brisbane,
... the Bunyaville Forest Preserve,
... the Bunya corporation,
or the Bunya spa in NY.
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| He is named Bunya, after himself. |
It's a box-bun ... ya!
ReplyDeleteOh, but there's one more! You missed the viral family: Bunyaviridae! It can cause some pretty nasty diseases, but thanks to your Bunya, I can't look at its name without smiling. =:3
ReplyDeleteMy first bunny's name was Bunya, and she looked a lot like your Bunya. Her name came about because we first called her Honey, or Honey Bunny, which quickly evolved to Hunya (from the Chinglish phrase of endearment, Honey-ah--we were living in Taipei) Bunya. Then we dropped the Hunya because Bunya was so much more fun to say.
ReplyDeleteMy first bunny's name was Bunya, and she looked a lot like your Bunya. Her name came about because we first called her Honey, or Honey Bunny, which quickly evolved to Hunya (from the Chinglish phrase of endearment, Honey-ah--we were living in Taipei) Bunya. Then we dropped the Hunya because Bunya was so much more fun to say.
ReplyDeleteLol, what a fun way for a name to come about! I've often wondered about it, myself.
ReplyDeleteMy (then -2010) teenage daughter's "s.o." named our sweet bun "Lola". There was quite a bit of confusion about her gender, shortly afterward, so we thought (considering our love of 60s, 70s, & 80s music) "Lola" seemed perfect, regardless of her actual gender, so we kept it. Turns out that our sweet Lola does indeed identify as female.
We can relate (to the situation, name and tunes). Check out the video at http://bunyaboy.blogspot.com/2011/01/very-important-alice-update.html. We were later told Alice was even more complicated than that (a hermaphrodite).
DeleteWOWWW!!! That is really unusual! I've always loved 'A Boy Named Sue', lkl
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