The Origins of Seafood Names

A haddock by any other name would smell as … fishy.  But why is a halibut a halibut and a shrimp a shrimp?  The origins of many of these names are as poetic as they are descriptive.

Halibut – means “holy flat fish,” (hali = holy, and butte = flat fish in old Germanic languages) probably from the practice of eating fish on holy days or for fasts that required the abstention from red meat or poultry, a practice whose ghost is still evident in the menus of diners: clam chowder on Fridays.

Salmon – while some theories trace this name to Celtic, others draw a line back to Latin and the word salmonem, possibly from salire, meaning “to leap.”  This etymology muses on the strength of salmon swimming up rivers and jumping in the ocean: leaping.

Scallop – while English borrowed this word from the French escalope, meaning “shell,” the name goes back much further to an old Norse word: skalpr, meaning “sheath.”

Lobster – not the most appetizing of origins, this word comes from a corruption of the Latin locusta, meaning “locust” – and the Old English word loppe, which meant “spider.”

Shrimp – comes from an old Norse word meaning “a skinny person” – skreppa.

Tuna – one of Americans’ favorite fish, tuna, were called “tunny” up until the late 1800s, when Californians shifted the name.  Originally, it came from a Greek word that meant “darter,” or “to dart along.”

Albacore have an even better story, with a name coming from Arabic via Portuguese: al bakara, “big tuna,” means literally “camels or young heifers,” referring to the large size of the fish.

Oysters share a history with bones, not surprisingly – both take their names from the Greek ostrakon, meaning “hard shell,” or “bone.”

Crab – as anyone who has handled a live one can understand, these creatures take their name from an Old English and Germanic verb krabben, or “to scratch or claw.”

Special thanks to this site for research.