By John Pappalardo
A few weeks ago one of my compatriots here at the Fishermen’s Alliance, Seth Rolbein, wrote in his personal column “A Cape Cod Voice” about the arcane, bizarre way animals are named.
The scientific standard is “binomial nomenclature,” two words for each creature, using Latin and/or Greek, the genus (category) first and then the species (the specific animal).
A Swedish botanist named Carl Linnaeus, in the mid-1700s, was the one who became obsessed with trying to attach two names to every living creature on the planet. As Seth noted, this guy was a creative, dogged genius, codifying, identifying, and inventing names that exist to this day.
Fish were no exception, far from it. Here’s more than a dozen examples, focusing on some important species in local waters, adapted from https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/fishy-lexicology-science-whimsy:
Atlantic cod: Gadus morhua
Gadus is Latin for a generic fish, cod of course satisfying that characterization. Morhua is Latin for our kind of local cod.
American lobster: Homarus americanus
Homarus comes via Latin to French for lobster. The americanus tag was added in 1837 to indicate that the Northeast, big-clawed, hard-shell version is our true national standard.
Quahog: Mercenaria mercenaria
Linnaeus knew Native Americans used wampum as currency, which comes from quahog shell. So his name doubled down on that mercantile element, money money.
Skate: Leucoraja ocellata
Leukos means white in Greek, while raja means fish in Latin, and ocellata means marked with spots. Took two languages to get this one down.
Halibut: Hippoglossus hippoglossus
In Greek, hippo means horse, and glossa means tongue. So halibut resembles a big horse tongue, twice over for emphasis.
Jonah crab: Cancer borealis
Cancer is crab in Latin, and even then it was used for the disease as well, because the shape of tumors suggested crabs. Borealis means northern, as in aurora borealis, northern lights. Northern waters in this case.
Green crab: Carcinus maenas
Maenas translates as frenzied, as in the Maenads, Greek women and hard partiers with that reveler Dionysius. Watching green crabs explains where this came from.
Bay scallop: Argopecten irradians
Maybe because scallops clap around in the water, Linneaus hit on Argo as in the ship Jason and the Greek Argonauts sailed. Pecten is Latin for comb, invoking the look of their shells. Irradians means to radiate, or shine, also in Latin, and anyone who catches them will agree this is apt.
Sea scallop: Placopecten magellanicus
Pecten, as in comb, shows up again for sea scallops, placo meaning flat, so a flat comb. The Portuguese explorer Francis Magellan also got the straits between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans named for him, for sure a more significant honor.
Dogfish: Squalidae
This one’s straightforward: Dogs are sharks, squalidae in Latin.
Monkfish: Lophius americanus
Lophius indicates a crest, which probably relates to spines that poke out from the dorsal fin. Americanus indicates monkfish, like lobster, hail from this side of the Atlantic.
Longfin squid: Loligo pealeii
Loligo is a classification for various squid species. Apparently Linneaus was a fan of an 18th-century painter named Charles Peale, so as a compliment, maybe tip of the hat, conjured up pealeii.
Atlantic surf clam: Spisula solidissima
Spisula is genus for bivalves. Solidissima, as you might suspect, means hard.
Scup: Stenotomus chrysops
Stenos means narrow, stoma is mouth. Ops is the same root as optometrist, and chrys means golden, so golden-eyed.
By the way, Michael Palmer has created wonderful illustrations of all of these and many more that you can see (and buy) on his website: waquoitbayfishcompany.com
And now, back to the mission: Captura piscium (catch fish in Latin), and eat them (trogontas psari in Greek).
John Pappalardo is CEO of Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance