Vaksiku (Vaksik)

Looper, caterpillar (and adult) of the Geometer moths. Bit complicated this one: vaksik comes from vaks, a span. So possibly a translation from German, Spanner (word also used for shoe-trees and peeping-toms). But since the name in Latin (Geometer, lit. land-measurer), English (looper, spanworm or inchworm), French (chenille arpenteuse, lit. measurer, surveyor or geometer caterpillar), Swedish (Mätarlarv, lit. measuring-larva), Hungarian (Araszolóhernyók from a) arasz, span*; b) oló, an ‘-ing’ ending: and c) hernyók, caterpillars), Japanese (shakutorimushi [katakana: シャクトリムシ, kanji: 尺取虫], the ‘shaku taking bug’, shaku being an archaic [officially out in 1966 but said still to be used in carpentry...] Japanese measure equal to 10/33 m, or about 30.3 cm, or the average distance between two nodes of bamboo, although most inchworms are incapable of such refinement), and a mile-long list of other names all imply a similar notion. The interesting point about all this is we (I) still don’t know whether the name is due to obvious (i.e. simply observing their typical looping gait) convergent naming, or from a perhaps late-19^th‑C spread of international zoological nomenclature. I could look it up, but do you really want me to? Family includes Biston betularia of English ‘pollution as evolutionary agent’ fame. Part of a lepidopteran group. See also Villkäpa.

* Hungary has two spans: one from tip of the thumb to tip of the index, the kisarasz or small span, and th’other, presumably the one we have looping around the back of our minds despite the fact the distance spanned is probably still small, but hey, from tip of thumb to tip of little finger, the nagyarasz, or large span.