Where Do Dalmatians Come From?

Dalmatians can be found as far back as 3700 BC.They can be seen in egyptian art owned by King Cheops, who built the Great Pyramids. Dalmatians have also been documented across many other cultures and continents. They also can be found on Greek frescos whick depict both black- and brown-spotted Dalmatians.

Bringing these two ancient sources together, some canine historians point to records of a 400 BC breeding between a Cretan Hound (which survives to this day on the Greek island of Crete) and a Bahakaa Dog, or White Antelope Dog, a likely reference to its color and swiftness. That cross resulted in offspring that hunted deer and worked so well with horses they were naturally inclined to run alongside them – a tantalizing preview of the Dalmatian’s later role as the world’s pre-eminent carriage dog.

Adding to the breed’s air of mystery, its very name is a source of umpteen theories. Some argue that it’s a time-smoothed version of “Damachien,” which itself a portmanteau of “dama,” the Latin term for fallow deer, and the French word for dog. Others point to Jurji Dalmatin, a 16th-Century poet from Serbia who mentioned the breed in correspondence, or to the cloaks of “dalmaticus” fur worn by monks in a 14th-Century painting by the Florentine artist Andrea Bonaiuto that also depicted spotted dogs of Dalmatian type.

Finally – and probably most unlikely – the name is attributed to the Croatian province of Dalmatia, where the breed surfaced in the mid-1800s, and where it was often associated with the Roma people. Still, it certainly did not originate there. And just like those itinerant travelers alongside whose brightly colored wagons it trotted, the Dalmatian was a jack of all trades, able to herd, retrieve, guard, and control vermin. Any breed that can work as a messenger during both world wars, as well as star as an eye-catching circus performer, is nothing if not versatile.