Origin of Ho-Oh

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I was looking up the characters for pineapple

凤梨, pinyin feng4 li2

Literally, Feng pear

Then I got curious about this Feng, turns out it refers to Fenghuang, a mythical king of birds in east Asian mythos - the Japanese reading for 凤凰 is Ho-O it turns out

So now you might ask why the pineapple is called Ho-Oh/Fenghuang's pear in Chinese?

Look at Ho-Oh's tail, it resembles the barbs on a pineapple quite well (as do some depictions of Fenghuang)

And there you have it, the pineapple is named after a Fenghuang tail

Definitely will be thinking of Ho-Oh the next time I buy a pineapple / Feng pear