Where Did The Name Mosquito Come From?

Where Did the Name Mosquito Come From?

The Spanish called the mosquitoes, musketas.

The native Hispanic Americans called them zancudos.

The word mosquito is Spanish or Portuguese meaning little fly, while zancudos, also a Spanish word, means long-legged.

The use of the word mosquito is apparently of North American origin and dates back to about 1583.

In Europe, mosquitoes were called gnats by the English, Les moucherons or Les cousins by French writers, and Stechmucken or Schnacke by the Germans.

In Scandanavian countries, they called mosquitoes by a variety of names including myg and myyga while the Greeks called them konopus.

In 300 B.C., Aristotle referred to mosquitoes as empis in his Historia Animalium where he documented their life cycle and metamorphic abilities.

Modern writers used the name Culex and it is retained today as the name of a mosquito genus.

What is the correct plural form of the word mosquito? In Spanish it would be mosquitos, but in English mosquitoes (with the e) is correct (Source: The American Mosquito Control Association).