Danish: Mary chicken
Dutch: our dear Lord's little creature
Finnish: blood Gretel or blood Bridget
Galician: little Jane, little Molly, king-king, or sun-watcher
German: Mary beetle
Luxembourgish: Heaven's little animal
Polish: God's little cow
Russian: godly little cow
Scottish Gaelic: speckled red beetle
Serbo-Croatian: Mary bug
Spanish: little little Mary little sissy or Catherine
Swedish: key-maiden
Turkish: good luck bug
Ukrainian: sun (affectionate) or God's little cow
Welsh: little red cow
- he/him
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Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, believe it or not. Occasional game dev. SFWA Associate. See website for bylines/portfolio. Yes, this is actually my name.
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in reply to @bethposting's post:
means “gods little cow” in ukrainian ^_^ this is because they are silly and precious
in reply to @bethposting's post:
Scottish Gaelic over there being like, "What!? That's what it is!"
In French we call them coccinelles (derived from the latin for "scarlet") or more affectionately/rarely la bête à Bon Dieu (the Good Lord's little creature)
Scottish-Gaelish be like "The Romans and the Saxons killed all our poets. Fuck you, bug"
not a European language but in Japanese it's "Heaven Road/Path Bug" so something like "Bug on the path to heaven" 天道虫(tentoumushi)
in portuguese it's little joana. apparently it's a cognate with galician — i didn't really expect joana and jane to be related (i'd go with joan, as in of arc), but old ass and biblical european names always surprise me that way ^_^
The Finnish name is alder (the tree) gretel or bridget (leppäkerttu/leppäpirkko), if it was blood it would be veripirkko.
A tiny correction: The Swedish word ("nyckelpiga") translates to "key-maid", not "key-maiden". "Piga" is an old Swedish for a female house servant (though originally it just meant "girl").