Disputatio:Chinchilla

I've actually had a thorough discussion with Morgan and Berard about how to say chinchilla. The general agreement was that chinchilla was passable, especially as it's the generic name in scientific Latin. A purer Latin name could be mus laniger since Classical Latin had a tendency to use mus for any number of small furry creatures that weren't mice. The word chinchilla actually comes from Latin *cimicilla, but unfortunately that means "little bug," so it doesn't work so well! --Iustinus 17:48, 20 Iunii 2007 (UTC)