question: Why are there so many countries that have the word Guinea in them and no association to Guinea Pigs?
comment: Etymologists dispute the earliest origins of the word “Guinea”. Some trace it to a word in Tuareg, a Berber language, for black people: aginaw. Others think it originally referred to Djenné, a trading city in modern-day Mali. In the 15th century, Portuguese sailors used “Guiné” to describe an area near what is today Senegal, and by the 18th century, Europeans used “Guinea” to refer to much of the West African coastline. As colonisers carved up the continent, many European nations controlled their own Guinea. At independence, French Guinea became Guinea, Spanish Guinea became Equatorial Guinea, and Portuguese Guinea became Guinea-Bissau. The region was a major source of gold, hence the name “guinea” for the British gold coin.
passages: The scientific name of the common species is "Cavia porcellus", with "" being Latin for "little pig". "Cavia" is New Latin; it is derived from "cabiai", the animal's name in the language of the Galibi tribes once native to French Guiana. "Cabiai" may be an adaptation of the Portuguese "çavia" (now "savia"), which is itself derived from the Tupi word "saujá", meaning rat. Guinea pigs are called "quwi" or "jaca" in Quechua and "cuy" or "cuyo" (plural "cuyes, cuyos") in the Spanish of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Ironically, breeders tend to use the more formal "cavy" to describe the animal, while in scientific and laboratory contexts, it is far more commonly referred to by the more colloquial "guinea pig".
   The animal's name alludes to pigs in many European languages. The German word for them is "Meerschweinchen", literally "little sea pig", which has been translated into Polish as "świnka morska", into Hungarian as "tengerimalac", and into Russian as "морская свинка". This derives from the Middle High German name "merswin". This originally meant "dolphin" and was used because of the animals' grunting sounds (which were thought to be similar). Many other, possibly less scientifically based explanations of the German name exist. For example, sailing ships stopping to reprovision in the New World would pick up stores of guinea pigs, which provided an easily transportable source of fresh meat. The French term is "cochon d'Inde" (Indian pig) or "cobaye"; the Dutch call it "Guinees biggetje" (Guinean piglet) or cavia (while in some Dutch dialects it is called "Spaanse rat"); and in Portuguese, the guinea pig is variously referred to as "cobaia", from the Tupi word via its Latinization, or as "porquinho da Índia" (little Indian pig). This is not universal; for example, the common word in Spanish is "conejillo de Indias" (little rabbit of the Indies). The Chinese refer to them as 豚鼠 ("túnshǔ", 'pig mouse'), and sometimes as Netherlands pig (荷蘭豬, "hélánzhū") or Indian mouse (天竺鼠, "tiānzhúshǔ"). The Japanese word for guinea pig is "モルモット" ("morumotto"), which derives from the name of another mountain-dwelling rodent, the marmot; this is what guinea pigs were called by the Dutch traders who first brought them to Nagasaki in 1843. The other Japanese word for guinea pig, using kanji, is "tenjiku-nezumi" (天竺鼠, or てんじくねずみ), which literally translates as "India rat".
   Section::::As food.:Western World.
  
  Andean immigrants in New York City raise and sell guinea pigs for meat, and some South American restaurants in major cities in the United States serve "cuy" as a delicacy. In the 1990s and 2000s, La Molina University began exporting large breed guinea pigs to Europe, Japan, and the United States in the hope of increasing human consumption outside of countries in northern South America.
  
  Section::::As food.:Sub-Saharan Africa.
   The origin of "guinea" in "guinea pig" is harder to explain. One proposed explanation is that the animals were brought to Europe by way of Guinea, leading people to think they had originated there. "Guinea" was also frequently used in English to refer generally to any far-off, unknown country, so the name may simply be a colorful reference to the animal's exotic appeal. Another hypothesis suggests the "guinea" in the name is a corruption of "Guiana", an area in South America. A common misconception is that they were so named because they were sold for the price of a guinea coin; this hypothesis is untenable, because the guinea was first struck in England in 1663, and William Harvey used the term "Ginny-pig" as early as 1653. Others believe "guinea" may be an alteration of the word coney (rabbit); guinea pigs were referred to as "pig coneys" in Edward Topsell's 1607 treatise on quadrupeds.
   The derivation of the breed's name is unknown, but does not connote an origin in the geographical region of Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia).
   The Guinea Pig
  
  The Guinea Pig may refer to:
  
  BULLET::::- "The Guinea Pig (play)" - a 1929 play by Preston Sturges
  
  BULLET::::- "The Guinea Pig (Chetham-Strode)" - a 1946 play by Warren Chetham-Strode
  
  BULLET::::- "The Guinea Pig (film)" - a 1948 British film starring Richard Attenborough
  
  BULLET::::- "The Guinea Pig (comic strip)" - a comic strip within the "Eagle" comic, from 1965 to 1969
  
  BULLET::::- "The Guinea Pigs" - a novel by Ludvik Vaculik
  
  BULLET::::- "Guinea Pig" (film series) - a series of seven controversial 1980s Japanese exploitation gore-horror films.
   As a result of their widespread popularity, especially in households with children, guinea pigs have shown a presence in culture and media. Some noted appearances of the animal in literature include the short story "Pigs Is Pigs" by Ellis Parker Butler, which is a tale of bureaucratic incompetence. Two guinea pigs held at a railway station breed unchecked while humans argue as to whether they are "pigs" or "pets" for the purpose of determining freight charges. Butler's story, in turn, inspired the "" episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", written by David Gerrold. In the Golden Hamster Saga books, two guinea pigs named Enrico and Caruso are modern-day thespians (named after Enrico Caruso) who serve as secondary characters, and often irritate the main character, Freddy Auratus, who strongly dislikes their acting antics.
   The domestic guinea pig plays an important role in folk culture for many indigenous Andean groups, especially as a food source, but also in folk medicine and in community religious ceremonies. The animals are used for meat and are a culinary staple in the Andes Mountains, where they are known as "cuy". A modern breeding program was started in the 1960s in Peru that resulted in large breeds known as "cuy mejorados" ("improved cuy") and prompted efforts to increase consumption of the animal outside South America.
   BULLET::::- Guinea pig, a genus of rodents
  
  BULLET::::- Guinea snout-burrower, a species of frog
  
  BULLET::::- Guinea worm, parasitic worm native to parts of Africa
  
  BULLET::::- Guineafowl, four genera of chicken-like birds in the family Numididae
  
  Section::::Other uses.
  
  BULLET::::- "Guinea", an English language offensive term for someone of Italian descent
  
  BULLET::::- "Guineas", a former term (now considered pejorative) for the Chestnut Ridge people of West Virginia
  
  BULLET::::- ""Impatiens hawkeri"" (New Guinea impatiens), a species of flowering plant in the family Balsaminaceae
  
  BULLET::::- Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, an ecoregion of West Africa
   Guinea pigs (called "cuy", "cuye", or "curí") were originally domesticated for their meat in the Andes. Traditionally, the animal was reserved for ceremonial meals by indigenous people in the Andean highlands, but since the 1960s, it has become more socially acceptable for consumption by all people. It continues to be a major part of the diet in Peru and Bolivia, particularly in the Andes Mountains highlands; it is also eaten in some areas of Ecuador (mainly in the Sierra) and in Colombia, exclusively in highland locations in the department of Nariño near the border with Ecuador. Because guinea pigs require much less room than traditional livestock and reproduce extremely quickly, they are a more profitable source of food and income than many traditional stock animals, such as pigs and cattle; moreover, they can be raised in an urban environment. Both rural and urban families raise guinea pigs for supplementary income, and the animals are commonly bought and sold at local markets and large-scale municipal fairs.
   Section::::American.
   Guinea pig (disambiguation)
  
  A guinea pig is a domestic rodent.
  
  Guinea pig may also refer to:
  
  BULLET::::- Guinea pig, a slang term for a test subject of any species:
  
  BULLET::::- Human subject research
  
  BULLET::::- Animal testing
  
  BULLET::::- The Guinea Pig Club, a group of surgical patients
  
  BULLET::::- "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs", a 1933 book about the pharmaceutical and food industries
  
  BULLET::::- "Guinea Pig" (film series), a controversial series of Japanese films
  
  BULLET::::- "Guinea Pig" (TV series), a Discovery Channel series
  
  BULLET::::- "The Guinea Pig" (film), a 1948 film starring Richard Attenborough
   The name derives from the origins of the Guinea hog were believed to be from African Guinea, but its now thought that Guinea just implied small, like Guinea Cattle. Guinea Hogs and Guinea Cattle are both smaller breeds of domestic livestock. The true African Guinea hogs are a large, red breed with upright ears, bristly hair and long tails, suggesting genetic influence of the Nigerian black or Ashanti pig. They were brought to America on slave ships. Around 1804, Thomas Jefferson acquired some of these pigs, which had arrived from Africa via the Canary Isles. The original strain, although basically black, also had a hint of red and were consequently called "red Guineas"; that strain, well known at the beginning of the 19th century, is extinct.
   Guinea pigs have also been featured in film and television. In the TV movie "Shredderman Rules", the main character and the main character's crush both have guinea pigs which play a minor part in the plot. A guinea pig named Rodney, voiced by Chris Rock, was a prominent character in the 1998 film "Dr. Dolittle", and Linny the Guinea pig is a co-star on Nick Jr.'s "Wonder Pets". Guinea pigs were used in some major advertising campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, notably for Egg Banking plc, Snapple, and Blockbuster Video. The Blockbuster campaign is considered by some guinea pig advocates to have been a factor in the rise of caging guinea pigs and rabbits together. In the "South Park" season 12 episode "", giant guinea pigs dressed in costumes rampage over the Earth. The 2009 Walt Disney Pictures movie "G-Force" features a group of highly intelligent guinea pigs trained as operatives of the U.S. government. A video game based on the movie was also released. A guinea pig named Bugsy appears in the 2008 film "Bedtime Stories". A guinea pig named Cashew features prominently in the second season of the U.S. adaptation of "House of Cards".
   Section::::As food.
  
  Section::::As food.:South America.
   "The Fairy Caravan", a novel by Beatrix Potter, and Michael Bond's Olga da Polga series for children, both feature guinea pigs as the protagonist. Another appearance is in "The Magician's Nephew" by C. S. Lewis: in the first (chronologically) of his "The Chronicles of Narnia" series, a guinea pig is the first creature to travel to the Wood between the Worlds. In Ursula Dubosarsky's "Maisie and the Pinny Gig", a little girl has a recurrent dream about a giant guinea pig, while guinea pigs feature significantly in several of Dubosarsky's other books, including the young adult novel "The White Guinea Pig" and "The Game of the Goose".
   Biological experimentation on domestic guinea pigs has been carried out since the 17th century. The animals were so frequently used as model organisms in the 19th and 20th centuries that the epithet "guinea pig" came into use to describe a human test subject. Since that time, they have been largely replaced by other rodents such as mice and rats. However, they are still used in research, primarily as models for human medical conditions such as juvenile diabetes, tuberculosis, scurvy (like humans, they must get vitamin C), and pregnancy complications.
  
  Section::::Name.
   Section::::History.
   Many efforts have also been made to promote guinea pig husbandry in developing countries of West Africa, where they occur more widely than generally known because they are usually not covered by livestock statistics. However, it has not been known when and where the animals have been introduced to Africa. In Cameroon, they are widely distributed. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they can be found both in peri-urban environments as well as in rural regions, for example, in South Kivu. They are also frequently held in rural households in Iringa Region of southwestern Tanzania.
  
  Section::::In scientific research.
   Peruvian wild guinea pigs were first described by E. T. Bennett in 1835, who termed them "Cavia cutleri". Johann Jakob von Tschudi, in an 1845 publication, used the term "Cavia cutleri" to refer to what are now considered two separate entities - the first, Bennett's "Cavia cutleri", which was later (by Oldfield Thomas in 1917) identified as probably a differently pigmented version of "Cavia porcellus", and the second, a wild Peruvian guinea pig that was clearly different from the animal Bennett described. In 1867, Leopold Fitzinger renamed the latter guinea pig "Cavia tschudii".
  
  Section::::Description.
   In English, the term "guinea pig" is commonly used as a metaphor for a subject of scientific experimentation, or any experiment or test in modern times. This dates back to the early 20th century; the "Oxford English Dictionary" notes its first usage in this capacity in 1913. In 1933, Consumers Research founders F. J. Schlink and Arthur Kallet wrote a book entitled "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs", extending the metaphor to consumer society. The book became a national bestseller in the United States, thus further popularizing the term, and spurred the growth of the consumer protection movement. During World War II, the plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe established the Guinea Pig Club at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, Sussex, England as a social club and mutual support network for his patients, who were undergoing previously-untested reconstruction procedures. The negative connotation of the term was later employed in the novel "The Guinea Pigs" (1970) by Czech author Ludvík Vaculík as an allegory for Soviet totalitarianism. Guinea pigs remained popular laboratory animals until the later 20th century: about 2.5 million guinea pigs were used annually in the U.S. for research in the 1960s, but that total decreased to about 375,000 by the mid-1990s. As of 2007, they constitute about 2% of the current total of laboratory animals. In the past, they were widely used to standardize vaccines and antiviral agents; they were also often employed in studies on the production of antibodies in response to extreme allergic reactions, or anaphylaxis. Less common uses included research in pharmacology and irradiation. Since the middle 20th century, they have been replaced in laboratory contexts primarily by mice and rats. This is in part because research into the genetics of guinea pigs has lagged behind that of other rodents, although geneticists W. E. Castle and Sewall Wright made a number of contributions to this area of study, especially regarding coat color. In 2004, the U.S.'s National Human Genome Research Institute announced plans to sequence the genome of the domestic guinea pig.
   How the animals came to be called "pigs" is not clear. They are built somewhat like pigs, with large heads relative to their bodies, stout necks, and rounded rumps with no tail of any consequence; some of the sounds they emit are very similar to those made by pigs, and they also spend a large amount of time eating. They can survive for long periods in small quarters, like a 'pig pen', and were thus easily transported on ships to Europe.
   Guinea, Virginia
  
  Guinea is an unincorporated community in Caroline County, Virginia, United States. Guinea is northwest of Bowling Green. The modern spelling of the name has been altered from the earlier "Guiney" or "Guiney's", so called after an old Caroline County family, the Guineys (also spelled Guinney, Gwinny, or Ginny in various records). Guinea was the site of a Civil War era railroad station on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad known as Guiney's Station.
  
  About four thousand captured Union soldiers were collected at Guiney's station after the Battle of Chancellorsville.
   Peruvian research universities, especially La Molina National Agrarian University, began experimental programs in the 1960s with the intention of breeding larger-sized guinea pigs. Subsequent university efforts have sought to change breeding and husbandry procedures in South America, to make the raising of guinea pigs as livestock more economically sustainable. The variety of guinea pig produced by La Molina is fast-growing and can weigh . All the large breeds of guinea pig are known as "cuy mejorados" and the pet breeds are known as "cuy criollos". The three original lines out of Peru were the "Perú" (weighing by 2 weeks), the "Andina", and the "Inti".
   Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cusco shows Christ and the 12 disciples dining on guinea pig. The animal remains an important aspect of certain religious events in both rural and urban areas of Peru. A religious celebration known as "jaca tsariy" ("collecting the cuys") is a major festival in many villages in the Antonio Raimondi province of eastern Peru, and is celebrated in smaller ceremonies in Lima. It is a syncretistic event, combining elements of Catholicism and pre-Columbian religious practices, and revolves around the celebration of local patron saints. The exact form the "jaca tsariy" takes differs from town to town; in some localities, a "sirvinti" (servant) is appointed to go from door to door, collecting donations of guinea pigs, while in others, guinea pigs may be brought to a communal area to be released in a mock bullfight. Meals such as "cuy chactado" are always served as part of these festivities, and the killing and serving of the animal is framed by some communities as a symbolic satire of local politicians or important figures. In the Tungurahua and Cotopaxi provinces of central Ecuador, guinea pigs are employed in the celebrations surrounding the feast of Corpus Christi as part of the "Ensayo", which is a community meal, and the "Octava", where "castillos" (greased poles) are erected with prizes tied to the crossbars, from which several guinea pigs may be hung. The Peruvian town of Churin has an annual festival which involves dressing guinea pigs in elaborate costumes for a competition. There are also guinea pig festivals held in Huancayo, Cusco, Lima, and Huacho, featuring costumes and guinea pig dishes. Most guinea pig celebrations take place on the National Guinea Pig Day (Día Nacional del Cuy) across Peru on the second Friday of October.
  