JACKSON, Wyo. — They’re everywhere. Huge, brown beasts roam freely across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). One even graces the Wyoming state flag. But are they called bison, or buffalo?
The bison is symbolic of the American West, but some linguistic confusion arises when considering related phrases, like “Buffalo nickel” or the lyrics to “Home on the Range.” So, which word is more correct?
Here in the U.S., there are only bison. Buffalo live only in South Asia and Africa, such as water buffalo and cape buffalo. Like cows, both buffalo and bison belong to the Bovidae family, along with other cloven-hoofed mammals with ruminant digestive systems like antelope.
The scientific name for the animals that live in the GYE is Bison bison bison, or plains bison.
According to the National Park Service (NPS), however, it’s OK to refer to the American bison as a “buffalo” in colloquial settings.
“Generally, ‘buffalo’ is used informally; ‘bison’ is preferred for more formal or scientific purposes,” NPS says on its bison FAQ website. “Early European explorers called this animal by many names. Historians believe that the term ‘buffalo’ grew from the French word for beef, ‘boeuf.’”
Another theory for the misnomer also blames European settlers. Steven Rinella’s 2008 book “American Buffalo,” as spotlighted by a 2009 Huffington Post article, posits that the name grew out of a slang term for certain outerwear:
In Shakespeare’s time, military men often wore a type of protective jacket known as a buff coat; these coats were thick and soft and made of undyed leather. When Englishmen arrived in the New World, they would often describe any animal that yielded such leather as a “buff,” be it a moose or a manatee. Eventually all of the other North American animals acquired their own particular names, and the largest of them, the American buffalo, walked away with exclusive rights to the title.
Steven Rinella, “American Buffalo”
Buckrail runs this story annually.
