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From ба́бка(bábka, “grandmother, old woman”) + -ка(-ka), originally a diminutive; from the folk belief that spirits of the dead live on as butterflies.
Russian does not divide butterflies and moths the same way English does. Russian has мотылёк(motyljók) for a kind of small moth that swarms at night, and моль(molʹ) for the moth that eats clothes, but the other moths are all ба́бочки(bábočki).
