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Alengthy the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, a single fish has many names: ulchen, yshuh, uthlecan. These all describe the shimmering silver Thaleichthys pacificus, a coastline-dwelling smelt who migrate up rivers to spawn. The names are all variants of the phrase eulachon, from an Indigenous Chinook phrase for “grease.”
Indigenous folks processed the fishes’ oily flesh into preservatives, drugs, and meals. When dried, the fish might even be ignited and used as candles, therefore the English names “oilfish” and “candlefish.” Some Haida communities in what’s now British Columbia obtained hum (eulachon oil) or saaw (dried and smoked eulachon) in commerce from the Tsimshian folks. Within the native language of Nass-Gitksan, the fish is usually referred to as ha la mootxw, which implies “curing humanity.”
A fish’s identify is greater than a phrase. It’s a window.
All these names are contained within the entry for T. pacificus in FishBase, a worldwide database of fish species. The compendium was launched within the late Nineteen Eighties by researchers who needed to gather not solely scientific information on the world’s roughly 35,000 recognized fish species, but additionally their names in as many languages as potential. FishBase now catalogs greater than 320,000 fish names in about 350 languages—not simply main languages like Japanese or English, but additionally many smaller and native ones, most of them Indigenous.
English as a worldwide lingua franca has amassed many names for fish from around the globe. However among the many normal public, fish information has deteriorated to the purpose the place many individuals can solely identify a handful of species, typically solely figuring out them as filets in supermarkets. FishBase serves as a reminder of the wealthy relationships that completely different societies, particularly Indigenous cultures, have with marine life. A fish’s identify, in spite of everything, is greater than a phrase: It’s a window into how completely different cultures view, commerce, use, and mythologize fish, says Deng Palomares, a senior scientist on the College of British Columbia’s Sea Round Us analysis unit and a longtime information curator of fish names at FishBase. “The variety of names for one fish provides you an concept of how necessary that fish is to the tradition,” Palomares says.
The Pacific Northwest coast is exceptionally fertile cultural floor for fish names. The area boasts dozens of languages, making it one of many world’s most linguistically various areas. Fish have lengthy been the first protein supply within the area, the place the jagged topography and oft-waterlogged soils make agriculture troublesome. Over generations, societies there developed a wealthy information of various species, superior fishing applied sciences, and numerous strategies of preparation and preservation—and all of the language to explain that, says James Crippen of the Tlingit Nation, and a linguist at McGill College in Canada.
Even at the moment, domestically caught fish represent a lot of the Tlingit and Haida weight loss program, Crippen says. “In a society the place you’re consuming a hell of numerous fish, it turns into completely regular to have numerous phrases for fish,” Crippen says.
Lots of the names in FishBase haven’t any translations—maybe partially as a result of they’ve been used for therefore lengthy that they’ve change into fundamental phrases with no discernible etymology, just like the time period “cod” in English. Nevertheless, the names that do have translations reveal lots in regards to the numerous makes use of for fish. Saanich, for instance, a Salish language spoken in southern Vancouver Island, boasts a wealthy vocabulary for pink salmon, relying on whether or not it’s sliced (ok’wit’thet), ready salmon eggs (shamet skelex), barbecued (sk’wel’eng’s schaanexw), or smoked salmon soup (shmexwalsh). Given the significance of commerce within the Pacific Northwest area, names may also differentiate fish by how they’re processed and by whom, and the place fish are harvested.
Huge quantities of this data are disappearing.
“There’s a complete range in how folks work together and relate to those entities,” says hagwil hayetsk, often known as Charles Menzies, a member of Gitxaała Nation and an anthropologist on the College of British Columbia.
A Haida nickname for lingcod, sgaagaay, means “shaman dance”: Their head-shaking when hooked resembles a shaman’s actions when dancing. Different FishBase entries allude to cultural tales, akin to tcoktci’tcin, a Shuswap time period for the redmouth sucker fish that interprets to “having a bloody mouth.” Based on one Shuswap story in FishBase, fishes descended from the higher world; aiming for a big lake, some fish smashed onto the rocks as an alternative, wounding themselves and buying a bloody mouth. One other entry describes a model of an age-old poem within the Cagayanon language of the Philippines, which tells how the colourful reef-dwelling humphead wrasse acquired the bump on their heads: “Everybody was completely satisfied and made numerous noise; even the humphead wrasse ran to affix the enjoyable; he crashed right into a mind coral due to his haste; and that’s how he acquired the bump on his head.”
Many names additionally encode wealthy ecological and organic data. To environmental linguist David Harrison of VinUniversity in Hanoi, Vietnam, such information is wealthy in lots of Indigenous languages. What are thought-about completely different species within the typical scientific framework could be grouped collectively underneath one identify; in the meantime a person species might have many names that distinguish members by necessary organic traits like intercourse, dimension, conduct, life stage, or habitat.
As an example, Harrison has realized that folks on Futuna Island within the South Pacific distinguish between two fish who scientists think about the identical species: one sleeps within the daytime and the opposite at evening. Palomares recounts how one other Pacific Island neighborhood provides a sure fish species a distinct identify after they’re spawning, indicating a significant life stage throughout which they shouldn’t be harvested. In Saanich, giant coho salmon swimming upstream are referred to as sináech, whereas ok’wolexw are the “spent” chum salmon adults after they’ve spawned—and occasions of yr are additionally named after the fish species being caught, logging a type of ecological calendar. August, or chen’henen, is the time at which henen’, or humpback salmon, are harvested.
FishBase might assist protect a bit of cultural reminiscence.
FishBase isn’t an ideal file of fish names. The phrases are sourced from revealed information—together with books and magazines, scientific papers, reviews, theses, nationwide species checklists—somewhat than immediately from communities, that means there are doubtless many phrases nonetheless unrecorded. “We additionally should understand that many of the world’s languages are usually not written,” Harrison says, “so the overwhelming majority of names that people have for fish are usually not out there in any script however must be elicited and picked up orally.”
What names are collected should be necessary for researchers. Some Indigenous names might assist determine necessary organic and ecological variations unknown to educational analysis. Similarities in phrases in unrelated languages may additionally assist linguists hint prehistoric connections between societies, Crippen says.
But FishBase may additionally fulfill a deeper objective. Almost half of the world’s 7,000 recognized languages—most of them Indigenous—are endangered, because of the long-lasting impacts of colonialism in addition to ongoing stress from extra broadly spoken languages. Within the Pacific Northwest, fewer than 100 folks communicate Tlingit and all of them are aged, Crippen says. Haida has fewer than 20 Native audio system. “As a consequence of this, huge quantities of this data are disappearing. We’re within the final a long time of it being out there,” Crippen says.
Gathering written names for wildlife is comparatively low-hanging fruit in preserving these languages. The more durable job is documenting how phrases are used and the way they connect with a tradition’s worldview, in addition to revitalizing them by fostering new audio system. Such efforts are underway in lots of locations, and Palomares hopes that FishBase might assist protect a bit of cultural reminiscence—particularly as many fish themselves are more and more threatened. She fears that in any other case, the information of how fish acquired their names might disappear with the oldest audio system of a language. “It’s recording historical past,” she says. 
Lead photograph: Campbell Gunnell / Shutterstock
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