Names for the species include the common raccoon, North American raccoon, and northern raccoon. In various North American native languages, the reference to the animal's manual dexterity, or use of its hands, is the source for the names. The word raccoon was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term meaning 'animal that scratches with its hands', as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone. It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning '[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands'. The word is sometimes spelled as racoon. In Spanish, the raccoon is called mapache, derived from the Nahuatl mapachtli of the Aztecs, meaning '[the] one who takes everything in its hands'. Its Latin name, procyon lotor, literally means 'before-dog washer'. The genus Procyon was named by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr. The animal's observed habit of "washing" or "dousing" (see below) is the source of its name in other languages. For example, the French "raton laveur" means "washing rat". The colloquial abbreviation coon is used in words like coonskin for fur clothing and in phrases like old coon as a self-designation of trappers. In the 1830s, the United States Whig Party used the raccoon as an emblem, causing them to be pejoratively known as "coons" by their political opponents, who saw them as too sympathetic to African-Americans. Soon after that the term became an ethnic slur, especially in use between 1880 and 1920 (see coon song), and the term is still considered offensive. Dogs bred to hunt raccoons are called coonhound and coon dog. Due to having a habit of eating human garbage in urban environments, raccoons are also colloquially known as trash pandas.
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