Suppose you were the first person ever to see a giraffe and it was your responsibility to name it. Upon first inspection, you couldn't help noticing its long neck and then its spotted sides. Obviously it is a mammal with four feet. In some ways, it looks like a camel which has a long neck, admittedly not as long as the giraffe. And those spots on the hide of a giraffe— no camel has spots like that. In fact it looks very much like the spots on a leopard.
Thus the first Greek who named the giraffe called it "camel-leopard."
The Greek word is καμηλοπάρδαλις
κάμηλος = camel
πάρδαλις = leopard
Even the English word "leopard" is made from λέων and πάρδος (meaning "panther") and was once thought to be an offspring of a lion and panther.