ani

Note: As with other Brazilian animal names, this word originates with Georg Marcgrave and Willem Piso's Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Leiden and Amsterdam, 1648): "Ani Brasiliensibus; Avis Turdellae magnitudine, totaliter nigra, pennis, rostro, oculis, pedibus" ("Ani by the [native] Brazilians; a bird the size of a thrush, completely black—feathers, beak, eyes, feet") (p. 193). The corresponding Tupi word is anú (phonetically both vowels would be nasalized)—whence Portuguese anu, anum, described already by Gabriel Soares de Sousa in 1587 (see Antônio Geraldo da Cunha, Dicionário histórico das palavras portuguesas de origem tupi, São Paulo, 1978). It is not clear how Marcgrave arrived at a final i.