A specialist in Middle Eastern languages will likely be quick to associate Pol. mamuna ‘an ape-like mythological creature’ with Ar./Pers./Tkc. majmun ‘ape’. It is possible and indeed probable that this name is an Oriental borrowing applied to an ancient native belief, but a closer inspection reveals at least several other possibilities tangled in an ethnolinguistic web of potential conflations and contaminations. This paper presents the ethnographic background and some etymological ideas, though without as yet a definite answer.