Considering the geography, they certainly had first hand knowledge of scorpions...So, whatever language label they attached to 'nasty venomous critter with hooked tail' would translate to 'scorpion'....same thing if the drawing had been of a 'web-footed foul with a quacker' translating to 'duck'.
And similar myths, word stucture and gender (female, all scorpion-sky-deieties I've ever read about are female except one; two are female human with scorpion tails)