Etymology

indri

in·dri
I1N1D2R1I1

Today it means: A mostly Muslim ethnic group of Western Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan. Full definition →

Malagasy endrina
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The story

  1. Malagasy · derived fromindry
  2. Malagasy · derived fromendrina“the lemur Indri indri”
  3. English todayindri

Possibly from Malagasy endrina (“the lemur Indri indri”). A common explanation asserts that the word comes from the Malagasy indry (pronounced /ˈiɳɖʐʲ/) meaning “lo!” or “behold!”, or from indry izy (“There he is!”), which guides shouted to the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat (1748–1814) upon seeing the animal, and which Sonnerat mistook for its name, but it has been suggested that Sonnerat studied indris too closely for this story to be plausible.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.