The George and Martha sereis of childrens books feature an animal whose name comes from an ancient Greek word that means what?
Hippopotamus The common hippopotamus ("Hippopotamus amphibius"), or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous and aggressive mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus ("Choeropsis liberiensis" or "Hexaprotodon liberiensis"). The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος ). After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, the closest living relatives of the Hippopotamidae are cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about . The common ancestor of whales and hippos split from other even-toed ungulates around . The earliest known hippopotamus fossils, belonging to the genus "Kenyapotamus" in Africa, date to around .
Perseus Because of the obscurity of the name Perseus and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists presume that it might be pre-Greek; however, the name of Perseus’ native city was Greek and so were the names of his wife and relatives. There is some idea that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language. In that regard Robert Graves has proposed the only Greek derivation available. Perseus might be from the Greek verb, "πέρθειν" ("perthein"), “to waste, ravage, sack, destroy”, some form of which appears in Homeric epithets. According to Carl Darling Buck ("Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin"), the "–eus" suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the aorist stem, "pers-". "Pers-eus" therefore is a sacker of cities; that is, a soldier by occupation, a fitting name for the first Mycenaean warrior.