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The word "raccoon" is derived from the Algonquian word aroughcoune, "he who scratches with his hands". Spanish-speaking colonists similarly adopted their term, mapache, from mapachtli the Nahuatl word for the animal, meaning roughly "that which has hands".

The genus name, Procyon, comes from the Greek for "before the dog"; this term is also used for the star Procyon of the constellation Canis Minor.

Raccoons are today understood to have a relatively loose evolutionary relationship with bears, which was nonetheless seen as significant by the early taxonomists; Carl Linnaeus initially placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus. In many languages, the raccoon is named for its characteristic dousing behavior in conjunction with that language's term for "bear": Waschbär in German, mosómedve in Hungarian, vaskebjørn in Danish and Norwegian, tvättbjörn in Swedish, wasbeer in Dutch, pesukarhu in Finnish, araiguma (アライグマ) in Japanese, orsetto lavatore in Italian, huànxióng (浣熊) in Chinese and mieshta mechka (миеща мечка) in Bulgarian all mean "washing bear". One exception is Russian, where raccoon is named yenot (енот) due to similarity between raccoon and genet furs. However, the full name of the common raccoon in Russian is also water-related: it is called yenot-poloskun (енот-полоскун), which means "rinsing raccoon".

In some cases, the "washing" descriptor is applied only to the common raccoon species: for example, in French the common raccoon is called raton laveur or "washing rat", while its Linnaean binomial is Procyon lotor or, roughly, "washing pre-dog". In contrast, the crab-eating raccoon is "little crab-catching rat" (raton crabier) and "crab-eating pre-dog" (Procyon cancrivorus) in French and Latin, respectively.




Genetic studies have shown that the closest relatives of the raccoon are the ring-tailed cats, coatis, and cacomistles.

In the first decades after its discovery by the members of the expedition of Christopher Columbus—the first person to leave a written record about the raccoon—taxonomists thought the raccoon was related to such taxonomic groups as dogs, cats, badgers, and particularly bears. Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus, first as Ursus cauda elongata ("long-tailed bear") in the second edition of his Systema Naturae, then as Ursus lotor ("washer bear") in the tenth edition. In 1780, Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr placed the raccoon in its own genus Procyon, which can be translated either to "before the dog" or "dog-like". It is also possible that Storr had its nocturnal lifestyle in mind and chose the star Procyon as eponym for the species.

Based on fossil evidence from France and Germany, the first known members of the family Procyonidae lived in Europe in the late Oligocene about 25 million years ago. Similar tooth and skull structures suggest procyonids and weasels share a common ancestor, but molecular analysis indicates a closer relationship between raccoons and bears. After the then-existing species crossed the Bering Strait at least six million years later, the center of its distribution was probably in Central America. Coatis (Nasua and Nasuella) and raccoons (Procyon) have been considered to possibly share common descent from a species in the genus Paranasua present between 5.2 and 6.0 million years ago. This assumption, based on morphological comparisons, conflicts with a 2006 genetic analysis that indicates raccoons are more closely related to ringtails.

Unlike other procyonids, such as the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus), the ancestors of the common raccoon left tropical and subtropical areas and migrated farther north about 4 million years ago, in a migration that has been confirmed by the discovery in the Great Plains of fossils dating back to the middle of the Pliocene.

Etymology

The word "raccoon" was adopted into English from a native Powhatan term, as used in the Virginia Colony. (Powhatan is a member of the Native American [Algonquian]] language family.) It was recorded on Captain John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone. It has also been identified as a Proto-Algonquian root aroughcoune ("ahrah-koon-em"), meaning "[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands." Similarly, Spanish colonists adopted the Spanish word mapache from the Nahuatl mapachitli of the Aztecs, meaning " one who takes everything in its hands".

In many languages, the raccoon is named for its characteristic dousing behavior in conjunction with that language's term for "bear." All of the following mean "washing bear": Waschbär in German, mosómedve in Hungarian, vaskebjørn in Danish and Norwegian, tvättbjörn in Swedish, wasbeer in Dutch, pesukarhu in Finnish, araiguma (アライグマ) in Japanese, orsetto lavatore in Italian, huànxióng (浣熊) in Chinese, and mieshta mechka (миеща мечка) in Bulgarian.

In French and Portuguese (in Portugal), the washing behavior is combined with these languages' term for rat, yielding, respectively, raton laveur and ratão-lavadeiro. In some cases, the "washing" descriptor is applied only to the common raccoon species, such as with the French raton laveur. In contrast, the crab-eating raccoon is "little crab-catching rat" (raton crabier) and "crab-eating pre-dog" (Procyon cancrivorous) in French and Latin, respectively.




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