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What's the word for horse-headed human? (Opposite of a centaur)

English Language & Usage Asked by Einstein X. Mystery on February 25, 2021

Centaur – horse body, additional human torso, human head.

Minotaur – human body, bovine head.

I’m looking for a word for a creature with the head/neck of a horse and the body of a normal human. I keep thinking of constructions like “equitaur” or “minoquus“, but nothing validating comes up when I search for them.

Any ideas? Something crafted anew would be fine, as long as it’s sensible.

5 Answers

According to Wiki, there are these specific named gods:

Indian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayagriva

Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox-Head_and_Horse-Face

The closest I saw was supposedly a half-horse/half-human 'kinnara' from Indian mythology, but it had no sources and none of the art in the main article depicts anything like this. I am disinclined to believe it to be factual.

I am not certain if a creature beyond a specific god was ever made in any mythology. As such, if you need the word in a creative project, having your created word following the etymology of any other mythical creatures that feature in the project could be one way to go about naming it.

Answered by user285260 on February 25, 2021

How about horseman? There's an animated series on Netflix called Bojack Horseman, and the main character is indeed a man with a horse's head. The word also has the benefit of being easy to understand without use of Classical Mythology, or classical languages.

Answered by jpyvr on February 25, 2021

Apparently, Tikbalang. In Filipino folklore. Western mythos doesn't seem to have one.... but the Philippines does.

Answered by Kris Layzy on February 25, 2021

That's called Ipotane.

Ipotane

Ipotane — Google


Ipotane:

In Greek mythology, an ipotane was a member of a race of half-horse, half-humans. The ipotanes are considered the original version of the centaur.

Wikipedia


Or reverse-centaur (1, 2) as suggested by Greybeard

enter image description here


Hayagriva: Hayagriva, also spelt Hayagreeva (IAST: hayagrīva, literally 'Horse-neck'), is a horse-headed avatar of the Lord Vishnu in Hinduism.

enter image description here

Hayagriva — Wikipedia

Answered by Decapitated Soul on February 25, 2021

Tikbalang, a native folklore in our place here in Philippines which I always thought Minotaur. Apparently, I figured these two were different.

Answered by Juan on February 25, 2021

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