What does ‘Natty Narwhal’ actually mean? You’ll be surprised…

Two words that form the code name for the new version of Ubuntu – but both are rather unique. Here we take a look at where each word came from and what it means today…

Natty

‘Natty’, which means to look smart in appearance, is a presumed derivative of ‘neat’.

• dictionary.reference.com/browse/natty

Synonyms for ‘Natty’ include ‘Dapper’ and ‘Jaunty’ – both previously used in Ubuntu codenames (Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake and Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, respectively.)

Narwhal

The origin of the name ‘narwhal’ is a bit more disturbing.



Ancient sailors traversing the bitter cold seas around Greenland, near the Arctic, often came across the sole-horned creature and so likened its skin to the pallid colour of the dead that it’s name in Old Norse - narhval – literally meant ‘corpse whale’.

It’s from this macabre description that ‘Narwhal’ is derived.

Image Credit: amutalrespect.org

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