Yales in Cambridge

"Yale" is not just a university or a brand of lock.

We are concerned here with mythical beasts... This one is classical Roman, having first been described by Pliny the Elder. He gave it the name of eale — we don’t know why: the word turns up nowhere else in classical literature — and included it as an animal of Ethiopia...

Following Pliny’s description, the yale is usually shown in illustrations as a mixture of bits of other animals, a chimera, with the snout of a wild boar, the body and head of an antelope, and a couple of long pointed horns of indeterminate origin. The beast turns up in English heraldry in late medieval times, with its form borrowed from Pliny...

The connection with Cambridge University comes via Margaret of Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII and reputedly the richest woman in medieval England. She founded two of the colleges of the university — Christ’s and St John’s — at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Because of this, her arms, including yales, may still be seen over the gatehouses of the two colleges [above]...

Yale University has borrowed the heraldic beast as a play on its own name. Two in chains flank the portico of Davenport College, one is depicted on the official banner of the president of the university and the campus radio station uses a yale as a logo. The university was actually named in memory of Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. His name comes from Iâl, a place in north Wales, which in turn is from the Welsh word for a fertile or arable upland.

From World Wide Words, where you can always find something interesting.