h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What are you whittering on about old chap?

I'm not sure I follow you (except by post number, of course)...does this make baby sticklebacks sticklebickerels then?

Perhaps baby dogfish are doggerels then?

(Sorry!, disappears quietly whence he came)

Aagh! thanx pheroneous. That was worth the price of admission

It seems several of the previous postings are suffering from a severe case (!) of Brahms & Liszt (a case being 12 bottles).
There doesn't seem to be any logic in the naming of baby things.
Cats aren't the only creatures to have kittens. This is confusing as someone talking about kittens doesn't necesarily mean baby cats. I think otters have kittens (amoung others).
And pups can be slightly confusing, as they could be baby seals (with no canine connection at all that I can think of).
Is the naming of babies universal (in the sense that English is the universal language) ? Why hasn't a name for, say, baby mice been invented ?

Baby Mice? Micelets, micerals, Mic (as in Chickens producing Chicks), Pink Squidgy Things, snake food?

I have a nagging fear that baby mice may be called kittens....

I do know that baby kangaroos are joeys and baby hares are leverets,
baby sheep are lambs, baby all canines are pups except wolves which have cubs...

Its a bit like the "collective nouns" thing - there are loads of words but most people just don't know them...
*psst - guide entry potential here!*

In my schoolgirls diary you used to get lists of them. There are loads of them, and totally illogical they are too.

It was nice being checked on your "Gaggle of Geese" and "Pride of Lions" as a change from mental arithmetic at the dinner table. Not to mention the leverets and goslings

Baby pike ARE called pickerel, so grown-up mackerel should be called make, but that would not have rhymed at all.
Baby rats are called kittens. I would guess that baby mice are too.
There are some strange conventions applied to animals. Cats board in a cattery but dogs take their holidays in a kennels, not a doggery - or a doggerel. Why do penguins live in a rookery? What lives in a scullery?

I want to know what mittens will be when they grow up.

Don't foxes have cubs too ?

Mice live in the scullery (by tradition)
The reason penguins live in a rookery is that folk gave up trying to say a 'penguinery'.

The collective noun for lots of clouds is a nudge. That's just a random bit of information that I've been carrying around for years, and never had a chance to tell anyone.

Gosh, this is exciting.
I've just got three in a row. Is that going to cause a row ?
Are there many combinations like pigs/piglets ? I can't think of any now.

live in a scullery. Where do minions live?
Do any of you live in a house with a scullery? I did when I was in my teens, but I bet the people that bought that house call it a utility room these days.

With the price of property in the SE, that scullery is probably now a self contained flat

Thinks: Is hamlet the meat of a piglet then?

Bear's and Big cats have cub's as well if I'm not mistaken...

The collective noun for these must be a set, which is also something in which badgers live. Roast badger and scallions anyone?
Presumably a ham is a large hamlet (oe?), a bad actor or the King of Denmark.

A large hamlet is a village.

happiness is a cigar called