Sabor (Tarzan)
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Sabor is a generic name for lionesses (originally tigers) in Mangani, the fictional language of the great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In Burroughs' works innumerable lionesses appear under the name of Sabor.
In the Walt Disney produced animated movie, Tarzan Sabor is a term for leopards, more specifically the leopard that kills Tarzan's parents and is later killed by him in turn.
[edit] Evolution of the term
In the initial magazine publication of the original Tarzan novel Tarzan of the Apes, Sabor meant "tiger". Burroughs subsequently altered the meaning to "lioness" for book publication after being informed that there are no tigers in Africa. He substituted "lioness" rather than "lion" because there was an existing Mangani term for lions in the story, Numa. Lions thus attained the distinction of being the only creatures with separate terms in Mangani for the male and female. An ex post facto explanation rationalizing the distinction has been found in the fact that male lions are maned and female lions are not, providing a marked visual distinction between the two.
In the Disney film the meaning of the word was changed yet again, to "leopard", despite the prior existence of a different and quite serviceable term for leopard in Mangani (Sheeta). The alteration was made for two reasons. The first was for factual accuracy; lions are in fact creatures of the veldt, not the jungle as portrayed in Burroughs's tales. The second was more aesthetic; Sabor, they felt, is simply a more evocative and interesting word than Sheeta.
[edit] Trivia
The Sabor from the 1999 Tarzan film later appears in the video game Kingdom Hearts as a minor antagonist. It engages in several battles with the protagonist party before being killed.
