Abstract. – Gugu is one of several names applied to a mystery primate from southern Sumatra, nowadays better known as orang pendek, which was first identified in the European literature over 200 years ago. The article reviews western reports of gugu, paying particular attention to linguistic evidence compiled by the missionary-ethnologist L. W. Jennissen and recorded in the Holle lists and, implicitly, in O. L. Helfrich’s published dictionary of the Besemah language. It is thereby shown how the Besemah representation of gugu can be fully understood only as a component of their folk classification of primates, and that, whatever the empirical referent of the name, for local Sumatrans this is a real creature ontologically comparable to locally known and zoologically recognized primates and not, for example, a spiritual being. A further conclusion is that gugu and comparable Sumatran terms most likely denote an ape, and possibly a recently extant southern population of orang-utans (Pongo pygmaeus) – the interpretation evidently reached by both Jennissen and Helfrich.
[Sumatra, Besemah language and culture, mystery primates, folk classification and nomenclature, ethnozoology, orang-utans]