Tintin Forums

Spurring off from the interesting Kit Jewitt blog-posts, found in this thread, some thoughts I recently had on parrots in Tintin...

It is amazing how many birds feature in the stories, particularly Emerald, with the owl, parrot and magpie. We see the villainous magpie in the very first frame, and in the English version Haddock sings "cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!", a poem set to music by several composers.

Hergé seems to be quite taken with parrots in particular and, although there's only two adventures where they feature heavily, they were a recurring theme (and nightmare) in the stories.

They are generally depicted as extremely annoying! They are all very talkative; We get "Every man for himself!", "Grrrrreat greedy guts!" and "Hello-o-o, I can hear you!" from Jacko, Polly and Iago, plus "Ration my rum!" and every other Haddock expletive from the parrots on Haddock's island.

The parrot in Congo, called Jacko in the French version (I'm not sure he's named in the English translation), bites Snowy on the tail, which would have been extremely painful, and it did lead to him having a minor operation.

In The Broken Ear we meet Coco (Polly in the English edition), who holds the key to who murdered Balthazar. This parrot also takes a chunk out of Alonso's finger (mind you, he deserved it!) My only worry is what happened to Polly after she'd revealed who the murderer was. Hopefully they let her fly away, although Ramon had just thrown a knife at her and Alonso was about to shoot her, so I do fear...

Of course, the most famous parrot in the stories is found in The Castafiore Emerald, named Coco (again!) in the French, and rather cleverly re-christened Iago in the English. It was mentioned in another thread the other day that the first three adventures had no recurring characters. I wonder whether Hergé was paying tribute to the Coco who appeared in that book by naming the parrots after him? (This is probably a bit of a stretch...)

In French Coco can mean "pal", "mate", "darling" and also coconut. Castafiore describes it as a "typically Italian name", which is actually true since it's is also used as a term of endearment similar to French. In the English version she says it was named in tribute to "Signor Verdi", with reference to the Othello opera.

And of course, this parrot also bites, with Haddock on the receiving end (and later head butts, or maybe nose butts). The Captain even has a horrible nightmare about the parrot but gets his revenge by dropping Iago into Castafiore's TV performance.

I thought it funny that Hergé used the name Coco three times, and twice for a parrot. Perhaps he just liked the name, or couldn't think of anything else!

Actually, in French, it is quite common to address a parrot as "Coco" - a bit like referring to a dog you've just met as "Fido", which some people do before being told its actual name.

I've come across some French comics in which a parrot appears and the main characters, on the spur of the moment, call it "Coco".

Yes, absolutely that - "Coco" is to French parrots what "Poll" or "Polly" is to ones in Britain or America.

Likewise, "Jocko" was a clichéd name for a chimpanzee (also used for orangutans, apparently), so clearly Hergé was not averse to sometimes going for the obvious choice when naming his animals...!

Thanks , that indeed makes sense. And the joke in Castafiore's remark about the Coco name being "typically Italian" is clearer, since it would be like saying "he's called Polly, a typically Italian name..." I still think that Iago was an inspired choice for the English version, however!

So, whilst 'Polly' would be English the equivalent of Coco, Coco seems to work for girls and boys, if I'm not mistaken? In The Broken Ear there's a couple of times where the parrot is referred to as 'he', despite Polly being a common girl's name. Not that it matters, either is fine!