# Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu: sher/shir (tiger - lion)



## Benyameen

Greetings everyone.

Is it correct that the word shir can be used for both a tiger and a lion?

I have Dari speaking Afghan friends who use the word shir to mean lion; I wonder if its roots may include tiger as well.

Thanks for your assistance.

Ben


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## greatbear

Welcome, Benyameen! It is true that in colloquial/spoken Hindi, "sher" (not "shir") can mean both tiger and lion; however, the actual words are "sher" for lion and "baagh" for tiger, thus different.


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## Qureshpor

In both Punjabi and Urdu, to the best of my knowledge we do use "sher" for both. But if we need to distinguish the two (lion vs tiger) we say "babar sher" for lion. Also "baagh" is used for tiger as well, but I don't believe this is all that common.


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## greatbear

^ Note, Ben, that as far as Hindi is concerned, it's "babbar", not "babar".


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## UrduMedium

In Urdu, i believe sher is used for both. But it "feels" much more precise only for lion. I do not know such a precise word for Tiger in Urdu. 

Perhaps someone can enlighten. baagh is not commonly understood in Urdu.


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## UrduMedium

greatbear said:


> ^ Note, Ben, that as far as Hindi is concerned, it's "babbar", not "babar".


Both babar and babbar used in Urdu.


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## Benyameen

Thanks very much to you all.

 The reason that I'm asking about this is because of the nom de guerre of the Afghan mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, Shir-e-Panjshir, the Lion of the Panjshir (Five Lions). It has always been translated into English as lion, and the Afghan Dari speakers that I know also see it as meaning lion. I knew that there were at one time Caspian tigers in Afghanistan and also that Kipling called the tiger in the Jungle Book Shere Khan... so I thought the word tiger might be more appropriate. But now I've found that apparently there were Asiatic lions until very recently in Iran (and presumably Afghanistan) as well... so maybe shir really does mean lion...

Anyhow, thanks for your time and for allowing me to participate in this amazing forum!

Ben


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## Benyameen

According to one online dictionary, the Dari word for tiger is also beber. I don't know if shir covers both tiger and lion in Dari; that will be one for the Dari forum. Thanks again!


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## Faylasoof

Please have look at this thread too!


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## Wolverine9

greatbear said:


> ^ Note, Ben, that as far as Hindi is concerned, it's "babbar", not "babar".



Actually, both forms are used.  See here and here.


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## Wolverine9

Technically, babar/baagh is supposed to mean tiger, while sher is supposed to be lion; however, the two animals often get confounded in Indic languages and dictionaries list either or both meanings.


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## Benyameen

Here's a partial report on Afghanistan's carnivores:

http://snowleopardnetwork.org/bibliography/Habibi_1977.pdf

It does indeed sound like palang properly refers to leopards or panthers, not tigers.

So, OK, I think that I have this much straight...

Sher/Dari/Lion.

Babr/Dari/Tiger

Palang/Dari/Leopard or Panther
(Prang/Pashtu/Leopard or Panther)

Palang Barfey/Dari/Snow Leopard
(Waawrin Prang/Pashtu/Snow Leopard)

Sher can refer to lions and tigers in general.

Palang can refer to tigers, panthers and leopards in general.

Thanks again to you all for sharing your knowlege. It's been a pleasure!


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## rituparnahoymoy

Sheikh_14 said:


> Palang so far as Urdu is concerned is merely used for a panther. I would assume the same is the case for both Pashto and Dari since the British named one of their operations in Qandahar as panjah e palang and have translated it as the Panther's claw/s. Similarly Leopard is explicitly tendwaa/tendu'aa. Would highly appreciate it if someone could tell me how the word for leopard above is meant to be pronounced. Lastly one thing I do not get is that whilst babar alone means a tiger why does a babar-Sher equate to a lion? Similarly in that case would babarii be leonine or tigerish? Considering Tigers and not Lions are native to the region at least in greater numbers there ought to be a clear distinction between the two. As far as I am aware like Persian its babar and via Indic roots baagh, I quite like nimr too since a tiger could quite easily be called a nimrnii and a cub nimr-chah. Platts includes it as an entry but messes up on its actual meaning. Perhaps there has been an evolution over time.



Actually, Singh is for Lion. And Bagh is for tiger.

Sher was used by the middle eastern people to describe lion and Tiger. and Perhaps it became too confusing as In India both lions and tigers are found even cheetah( before they were killed to extinction) and leopard. They added Babbar Sher which means Sher with the mane.

In my opinion.


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## PersoLatin

rituparnahoymoy said:


> Sher was used by the middle eastern people to describe lion and Tiger. and Perhaps it became too confusing as In...


Since Iran is firmly in the Middle East, I would like to clarify that in Persian we have shir/شیر for lion, babr/ببر for tiger, palang/پلنگ for leopard and yuzpalang/یوزپلنگ for cheetah, the two former cats became extinct in the early to middle of last century.


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## rituparnahoymoy

PersoLatin said:


> Since Iran is firmly in the Middle East, I would like to clarify that in Persian we have shir/شیر for lion, babr/ببر for tiger, palang/پلنگ for leopard and yuzpalang/یوزپلنگ for cheetah, the two former cats became extinct in the early to middle of last century.



You guys still have Cheetah in your area? We no longer have those fantastic animals.

So this is very confusing. 

Babbar here means Lion. And sher can either mean a Lion or a Tiger. 

That is why I used sanskrit terms to describe these two.

Singh= Lion, Baagh= Tiger.


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## PersoLatin

rituparnahoymoy said:


> You guys still have Cheetah in your area?


Yes and they are on the critically endangered list, for now we have 80-90 left in the wild. Look up ‘Asiatic cheetah‘ on Wikipedia.

As a matter of interest, who did you specifically mean by ‘middle eastern people’ in post #34?


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## rituparnahoymoy

PersoLatin said:


> Yes and they are on the critically endangered list, for now we have 80-90 left in the wild. Look up ‘Asiatic cheetah‘ on Wikipedia.
> 
> As a matter of interest, who did you specifically mean by ‘middle eastern people’ in post #34?




Everyone who lives there. I don't think when we call someone middle eastern we refer to Iranians. Here in India we call Iranians as persians.

In ancient time people who lived in the west and middle eastern called people living the Indian sub-continent as Hindus.

Hindus= Sindhu and in English "Indus". And from Indus river " the Inhabitants of Indus valley". Now known as "India".


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## Dib

Wolverine9 said:


> Technically, babar/baagh is supposed to mean tiger, while sher is supposed to be lion; however, the two animals often get confounded in Indic languages and dictionaries list either or both meanings.



I seriously doubt there is any confusion outside North-Western India and Pakistan.


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## Sheikh_14

For Urdu, here's my two cents:
Lion- sher, babar-sher (this exalted and exaggerated term makes little sense to me- perhaps the babar here relates to the mane and dressed hair), asad & arsalaan.
Tiger- Sher (eventhough preferably this ought to be used just for lions), namur, baagh & babar.
Leopard- Tendu'aa
Panther- Palang
Cheetah - chiitaa.
Persophones mentioned an interesting term in yuzpalang for cheetah, what does the prefix yuz signify?

Bengal tiger - Although most Urdu-phones have been familiarised with Sher e Bangaal, I quite like Babar e Bengaal, Siiberii-babar, Baaleenii-Babar and Sumaatrii Babar for the various specifies of tigers.


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## Alfaaz

Relevant thread (اردو محفل): شیر اور ببر شیر، ایک غلط فہمی کا ازالہ

Terms used in Urdu as well as Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Hindi, English, etc. are discussed.


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## Sheikh_14

I don't know how the switch came to be and surely there must be a deeper explanation then the one provided in the article above which is largely a lament but doesn't explain anything other than it was never meant to be this way!  Here's me just hazarding a guess. Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi phones are prone to repetition and hyperbole. The word babar relates to manes. Only animal that has a mane of the two is a lion. So not only is Babar Sher an exaltation of the lion by way of intensification I.e. not only are you a sher but you are a babar sher which could be a means of connecting the animal to its mane as well as an intensification of the more understated yet ferocious tiger.

H ببري बबरी *babrī* [S. वर्वरीक], s.f. Cropped or dressed hair, fore-locks, tresses; a particular method of dressing the front hair (of a girl or woman); fringe of hair worn on the forehead (by women); cropped hair (mane and forelock) of a horse; curly hair of a camel.

The British raj may have had a lot to do with this mixup as in English literature I.e. Rudyard Kipling's Jungle book this mix up is all too evident.  In fact they even use the name bagheera for a panther which illustrates the Englishs' penchant to learn smatterings of local languages but never truly getting into the nitty-gritty. Therefore, I understand where his rant towards the preponderance of English in the region is coming from. There's a high likelihood that the unnecessary confusion surrounding these big cats could in fact be an imposed imported problem as they were adopted correctly at the outset.

That said Babar alone and Babar sher are two different terms to me. Babar alone ought to explicitly mean a tiger. Babar sher on the other hand comes off as an intensification of the less regal tiger and thereby could befit a lion. This considering that Urdu has a habit of intensification/exhaltation by way of repetition.

I would be interested in Urdu lughat entries that support Platts and Shakespeare in suggesting that Babar= tiger. If anyone here could provide some especially from authoritative sources that would do us all a world of good. It is my supposition that it did indeed mean tiger until recently and by recent I mean the turn of the 20th century where terms started being used causally and interchangeably.

Sher-dil or Dil-sher to me always means lion-hearted and I hardly believe any one would say otherwise. Similarly, babar-mard as I came across in a piece of literature would mean a tigerine man, not a leonine gentleman. Eventhough the supporting online dictionary suggested otherwise.

I am curious where do you stand? How would you differentiate leonine with tigerine? Personally I would do it by saying sherii for the former and babari for the latter. Bear in mind that Babur was named after babar I.e. a tiger, and not a lion. Therefore I am certain this problem did not exist in Urdu dictionaries during the Mughal period. Also as far as I'm aware the Persian word Babar derives from the same root as baagh. Thence the two terms are interchangeable.


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## littlepond

Sheikh_14 said:


> ... which illustrates the Englishs' penchant to learn smatterings of local languages but never truly getting into the nitty-gritty.



That's a highly offensive generalisation and judgement!


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