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Etymology

In American English, both buffalo and bison are considered correct terms for the American bison. However, in British English, the word buffalo is reserved for the African buffalo and water buffalo and not used for the bison.

In English usage, the term buffalo was used to refer to the American mammal as early as 1625. The word bison was applied in the 1690s.

Buffalo was applied to the American bison by Samuel de Champlain as the French word buffles in 1616 (published 1619), after seeing skins and a drawing. These were shown to him by members of the Nipissing First Nation, who said they traveled forty days (from east of Lake Huron) to trade with another nation who hunted the animals. Buffel in turn comes from Portuguese bufalo (water buffalo), which comes from Latin bufalus (an antelope, gazelle, or wild ox), from Greek boubalos. From the same Greek word boubalos we also get the Bubal hartebeest.

Bison was borrowed from French bison in the early 17th century, from Latin bison (aurochs), from a Proto-Germanic word similar to wisent and, per Etymonline, first applied to American buffalo in the 1690s.

In Plains Indian languages in general, male and female bison are distinguished, with each having a different designation rather than there being a single generic word covering both sexes. Thus:

Such a distinction is not a general feature of the language (for example, Arapaho possesses gender-neutral terms for other large mammals such as elk, mule deer, etc.), and so presumably is due to the special significance of the bison in Plains Indian life and culture.