"Meerkat" is a loanword from Afrikaans. The name has a Dutch origin but by misidentification. Dutch meerkat refers
to the "guenon", a monkey of the Cercopithecus genus. The word "meerkat" is Dutch for "lake cat", but the suricata is
not in the cat family, and neither suricatas nor guenons are attracted to lakes; the word possibly started as a Dutch
adaptation of a derivative of Sanskrit markaţa मर्कट = "monkey", perhaps in Africa via an Indian sailor on board a Dutch
East India Company ship. The traders of the Dutch East India Company were likely familiar with monkeys, but the Dutch settlers
attached the name to the wrong animal at the Cape. The suricata is called stokstaartje = "little stick-tail" in Dutch.
According to African popular belief (mainly in the Zambian/Zimbabwean region), the meerkat is also known as the sun angel,
as it protects villages from the moon devil or the werewolf which is believed to attack stray cattle or lone tribesmen.
~wiki~
