Finnish linguist Juha Janhunen tentatively compares * gərin to an etymon reconstructed as * kalimV, denoting ' whale' and represented in the language isolate Nivkh and four different language families Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic and Samoyedic, wherein * kalay(ә)ng means 'whale' (in Nenets) and * kalVyǝ ' mammoth' (in Enets and Nganasan). Īxel Schuessler reconstructs 麒麟's Old Chinese pronunciation as * gərin. The identification of qilin with giraffes has had a lasting influence: even today, the same word is used for the mythical animal and the giraffe in both Korean and Japanese. Zheng He's fleet brought back two giraffes to Nanjing and they mistaken by the emperor for the mythical creature, with geri meaning giraffe in Somali. The Ming Dynasty bought giraffes from the Somali merchants along with zebras, incense, and various other exotic animals. The identification of the qilin with giraffes began after Zheng He's 15th-century voyage to East Africa (landing, among other places, in modern-day Somalia). The legendary image of the qilin became associated with the image of the giraffe in the Ming dynasty. Qi denotes the male and lin denotes the female (e.g. The bisyllabic form qilin ( 麒麟 ~ 騏驎), which carries the same generic meaning as lin alone, is attested in works dated to the Warring States period (475 – 221 BCE). Spring and Autumn Annals mentioned that a lin ( 麟) was captured in the 14th year of Duke Ai of Lu ( 魯哀公) (481 CE) Zuo Zhuan credited Confucius with identifying the lin as such.

Earliest mention of this mythical horned beast is in the poem 麟之趾 Lín zhī zhǐ 'Feet of the Lin' included in the Classic of Poetry (11th – 7th c.

Fire Dragon by M. Kei