Sea-trout and their names

[Preliminary note on the hyphen: many sea-trout names are technically-speaking compound words consisting of two separate words joined together to make a new word: sea-trout, fork-tail and black-neb are examples. Older, standard British English spelling conventions generally treat such words by inserting a hyphen between the two terms, while current American spelling usage leaves no graphic space (and inserts no hyphen) between the two words that go to make up the compound word, thus seatrout, blackneb and so on. In what follows, as has been the case throughout this book, standard British English spelling and typographical conventions are used, even though these conventions are coming to look increasingly old-fashioned in the 21st century, where ‘standard American’ is for many users of English a prestige variety of the written language.]

Introduction

Of all fish, sea-trout (Salmo trutta trutta) seem to have the most local names. In chapter

8 of The Other Side of the Stream (1998) I listed some of them. Here is that list (as we’ll

see below, it’s incomplete), slightly augmented and in alphabetical order: black-neb, bull-

trout, finnock, fork-tail, grey-trout, harvest-cock, herling, herring-peal, junior (or Juner),

May-peal, mort, orange-fin, peal, pugg-peal, salmon-trout, scurf, sewin, smelt, sprod,

truff, white-trout, whitling and yellow-fin.

Some terms, such as the familiar finnock (used largely in parts of Scotland and

Northern Ireland to refer to those sometimes immature sea-trout which have spent a mere

few months in saltwater), herling, smelt, sprod and whitling refer to the juvenile fish.

Other terms have a different dialectal distribution: peal, for example, seems to be used to

denote sea-trout in the English West Country, while sewin is thoroughly (Anglo-)Welsh.

Still other terms – bull-trout (or bullie) is a notorious example – seem to refer either to

large sea-trout distinct (in some unspecified way) from ‘usual’ sea-trout or, as local

anglers on the Northumbrian Coquet might allege, to salmon/brown trout hybrids which

return to the river in the late autumn....or perhaps to autumn-running slob trout (estuarial

brown trout). Finally, there are terms which appear to be merely opportunistic, as when

fishmongers, perhaps wishing to capitalise on the cachet of the term ‘salmon’, refer to

sea-trout as ‘salmon trout’.

Because of their dialectal spread and, often, the antiquity of their lexical form(s),

such a list of terms in particularly interesting to the sea-trout angler as well as to the

lexicographer. A great deal of information about how sea-trout have been regarded by

the angler is embedded in such a list. In what follows, that initial list will be explored -

Table A - and then supplemented by a second exploration, of those other terms listed in

Nall (1930) – Tables B-D. Finally, after a summary (Table E) of all terms that have

been used (or are still in use) to denote sea-trout, supplementary lists will be given

• of those terms still is use and apparently expanding in their geographical range;

• those terms still in use, either steady or contracting in their geographical range;

• obsolete terms; and

• terms not otherwise or elsewhere recorded.

*

Sea-trout names: a preliminary survey

The sea-trout wasn’t recognised as a distinct species by the author of the 15th century

Treatise, although the author had clearly heard of salmon, which seem almost

unattainable: ‘The salmon is a noble fish, but he is difficult to catch, for usually he is

found in the deep parts of big rivers; and for the most part he lies in the middle and out of

reach...’ (translated by Fred Buller and Hugh Falkus, Dame Juliana: the Angling Treatyse

and its Mysteries, 2001, p.88). The author recommended worms and dock grubs as bait,

and noted that ‘you may catch him (although it is seldom seen) with an artificial fly when

he rises....’

It must have been almost impossible to ply a fly over salmon with the tackle then

in use – a rod of around 14-18 feet, in three pieces, with the two-piece tip fitting into the

hollow butt, and with a line made of braided horse-hair affixed directly to the rod’s tip. It

might of course have been feasible to catch sea-trout with such tackle, particularly on

stillwaters and in smaller rivers, but no records of such catches or such fishing apparently

exist. If sea-trout were caught at this early period, it seems likely that they were caught on

bait, or by trapping or netting.

Nor did Walton recognise the sea-trout as a distinct sporting fish, though he noted

the existence of what he called ‘the Fordidge trout’ which ‘knows his times...of coming

into that river out of the sea, where he lives, and, it is like, feeds nine months of the year’

(ed. John Buchan, The Compleat Angler 1935: 73-74) – a clear recognition that at least

some trout could be anadromous. Further, although he is characteristically hazy, Walton

recorded that ‘[t]here are also in divers Rivers, especially that relate to, or be near the Sea

(as Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor) a little Trout called a Samlet or Skegger

Trout (in both which places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing) that will bite as

fast and as freely as Minnows; these be by some taken to be young Salmons, but in those

waters they never grow to be bigger than a Herring’ (ed. Buchan 1935: 72-73). I suspect

that Walton was referring to salmon or trout parr, although one would give a great deal to

know whether the ‘samlet’, when caught, had silver scales. If so, Walton might well

have been catching smolts or even herling – and if the last, it would be somehow nice to

think that the old plagiarist was the first to record doing so.

It’s odd that Walton didn’t unambiguously recognise the sea-trout, because (with

one possible exception, see sprat/sprod below) sea-trout names are first attested as

occurring in English in the late 16th century, almost fifty years before Walton began

writing. These are peal (possibly from Old French palle, ‘of a whitish appearance’,

though an origin in Irish is more probable, see below), sewin (etymology unknown) and

whitling (from ‘whit(e)’ plus the suffix –ling, which last has the characteristic property of

referring, sometimes affectionately, to juvenile or diminutive things or entities, compare

e.g. foundling and even darling, the last from deor, dear one + - ling). Many languages

use similar tactics – adding suffixes – to indicate terms of endearment, or the relatively

small size of the thing referred to. Dutch, for instance, has the widely-used suffix –je,

thus schat ‘treasure’ and schatje ‘dearest’ (a term of endearment), or voorn ‘roach’,

voorntje ‘little roach’.

Of some little interest is that fact that present-day peal is pronounced to rhyme

with ‘feel’ – that is, with the high front vowel symbolised as [i:] by phoneticians.

Nevertheless, like tea or teal, the word is spelled with <ea>. Such <ea> spellings often

imply that at some point in their history, the words were pronounced with an e-coloured

vowel (rather like a lengthened English ‘eh’): Alexander Pope, for instance, writing in the

18th century, rhymes tea and say. For Pope, speaking a relatively conservative 18th

century London English, this was a perfectly good rhyme; it means that the vowel of tea

was in the process of becoming [i:], but had not yet reached that vocalic position in the

oral cavity. It seems possible, then, that in the 18th century at least some speakers of

English would have pronounced our sea-trout term, peal, as ‘pale’. (On the possible

derivation of peal from an Irish root, see below.)

Peal (uncertainly) and whitling (more certainly) are the first terms to record

onlookers’ and anglers’ apparent obsession with the whiteness of the (fresh-run) sea-trout

– although peal in the Irish context is used of small salmon, and may well relate to the

relative size of the fish rather than to its colour (Irish píl means ‘large’, as Ėamon de

Buitléar pointed out in 2011). A century later, and the term finnock is attested (1771;

though as with all first attestations, the term might well have been in use in speech much

earlier). Finnock derives from the (Scottish) Gaelic root fionn, ‘white’. The –ock part of

the word appears to be another suffix – a quasi-suffix, Englished from Gaelic - indicating

something small, compare e.g. bannock, a little cake or sweet-bread, hummock, small

mound.

In the 19th century, the ‘white’ theme continues as taxonomy runs riot and as the

sea-trout was briefly re-classified as Salmo albus, ‘white salmonid’. Herling, too, is first

attested in this period, and although the origin of this word is unknown, it seems to be

related distantly to that of herring.

The partial list of terms for sea-trout given in The Other Side of the Stream is

presented below in tabular form. The table may serve as a provisional list of the sea-

trout’s names; other tables and research will be presented below. The terms included in

the first, provisional list are terms I’ve come across either in others’ speech (in England,

Scotland and many parts of Ireland) or in my reading over the past forty years. To

research aspects of the history of these terms, I’ve used the second great edition of the

Oxford English Dictionary (abbreviated below as OED2. It’s worth noting that when the

OED was first compiled in the late 19th century and early 20th, fish taxonomy was very

different from what it is today. Since OED2 reprints much material from OED1, that

accounts for the appearance of what today seem odd pieces of classification, such as the

constant mentions in OED2 of Salmo eriox and Salmo albus). The list has been

augmented by one or two other terms (such as ‘junior’ or ‘Juner’) which from my own

experience are common in parts of Ireland – ‘Juner’ for example is used widely on the

Currane system to refer to herling, but I haven’t heard it outside the Irish south-west

(Kerry and Cork). In the ‘Notes’ column I’ve given, where possible, recent attestations of

the word and I’ve indicated those cases where although I may have come across the term

in my reading, the word seems obsolete in speech. I’ve also included Walton’s term

‘skegger (trout)’ – simply because I was intrigued by the possible connection between a

run of sea-trout and ripening plums:

TABLE A A preliminary list of sea-trout names

Term Etymology

First written attestation

Notes

black-

neb

Not recorded as a sea-trout name in OED2

Unknown. Neb (‘chiefly northern and Scots’ derives from OE nebb, ‘beak or bill or a bird’in a transferred sense i.e. to any thing or creature having a specified type of neb. First attestation of neb 725, in a Glossary which

Sometimes the compound ‘black-neb’ is truncated to ‘neb’: ‘After numerous takes, three sea trout to 2 1/2 lbs and half a dozen nebs were netted.’ http://www.lochlomondangling.com/boatyarddiary/ Accessed July 8th, 2009

translated the Latin nautical term rostrum (‘prow’) as neb.

black-

tail

Transparently from black+tail.

OED2 records only ‘[a] sea-fish not identified and ‘[a] name for certain varieties of the perch’

http://zipcodezoo.com/Animals/S/Salmo_trutta_trutta/

bull-

trout

From bull ‘male of large animals’, adapted into English apparently from Old Norse bole, boli. Later, bull- is applied as a specifying quasi-prefix to birds and fish, compare e.g. bull-finch.

First attestion of bull (but not bull-trout) 1200. The first to record bull-trout as a sea-trout related word was Walton (first edition 1653), who noted that bull-trout was a Northumberland term.

Local Coquet anglers allege that bull-trout are hybrid salmon/brown trout. I think it more likely (though on little direct evidence) that at least some ‘bull trout’ are estuarial brown trout – often, large fish – making a late summer or autumn spawning run.

finnock From (Scots) Gaelic fionnag, which itself derives from fionn, ‘white’

1771: ‘Phinocs are often taken here in great numbers’

At a presentation during the 2010 Dutch Fly Fair I was asked by an audience member, who hailed from Northern Ireland (the Foyle region, near Strabane), why it was that I hadn’t mentioned ‘finnock’. I had, I said. I’d simply referred to them as ‘herling’. While fishing with Leslie Holmes on the Bann estuary (near Coleraine) in 2010 I was intrigued to hear Leslie, a native of that part of Northern Ireland, refer to juvenile sea-trout as finnock. This means that the term finnock is not confined to the Scottish Highlands and Islands: either it derives from a Gaelic lexical inheritance common to both countries, or it has spread from Scottish Highland usage to Northern Ireland. I suggest that the former is more plausible.

fork-

tail

Transparently from fork+tail

1753: ‘...a name given to the Salmon, while in its fourth years growth’. No specific sea-trout sense is given in OED2, though ‘fork-tail is recorded in a historical quotation under peal (see below).

Smaller sea-trout – herling – almost invariably have tails whose trailing edge is concave. Sea-trout of 2lb. and more typically have square tails. Very large adult sea-trout occasionally have tails whose trailing edge is convex, see round-tail (which Nall recorded as a term for large sea-trout in Northumberland and on the Tweed) below.

A fork-tailed finnock from Donegal grey-

trout

Transparently from grey+trout

1661: ‘Both the Salmon and gray trouts are very

Now obsolete?

pleasant, and good for sound persons....’ No specific sea-trout sense is given in OED2.

harvest-cock

cock in this context derives from an extended sense of ‘male of common domestic fowl’ (Old English cocc)

harvest-cock given in OED2 as one of the ‘local names of salmon in one of its stages’, first attestation in 1861. It’s a puzzle to know whether the ‘harvest’ is the earlier hay-harvest (in which case harvest-cock might refer to larger, earlier-running sea-trout) or the later grain-harvest, in which

case harvest-cock would refer to the more abundant smaller fish running into freshwater in August and September. I suspect – but no more than suspect – that the last explanation is the more likely.

harvest

er

Not recorded as a sea-trout name in OED2, though possibly a precursor of harvest-cock

See note to harvest-cock above.

herling No etymology is given in OED2, though OED2 records the term

1684 ‘Hirling’, 1791 ‘...some herlings’

The term has clearly spread in lexical and geographical extent since the 19th century and is now in widespread use (particularly outside the north and north-west of Scotland, Wales and parts of Ireland) to refer to juvenile (post-smolt) sea-trout.

as ‘local’: ‘name on the Scottish shore of the Solway Firth, for the fish Salmo albus’. There’s is very probably some connection with herring (from Old English hæring, hering)

herring-peal

Possibly related to pale (‘of a whitish appearance’, possibly adapted from French, see above). The clear connection to herring emphasises the shininess (and relative lack of

Not recorded in OED2 in any sea-trout sense, though appearing in an illustrative quotation (for herring-peal) under peal.

Now obsolete as a sea-trout term?

size?) of the fish.

junior/

Juner

Juner not recorded in OED2 in any sea-trout sense. Junior is adapted from Latin juvenior (‘younger’), and is generally used of persons. No specific sea-trout sense is recorded for junior in OED2.

Junior is used of persons from the 16th century onwards.

Sylvester Donnelly, our gillie on Lough Currane in 2009, was in no doubt about the etymology of ‘Juner/junior’. Like many in the SW of Ireland, he uses the term to refer to smaller sea-trout, fish generally around or under 1lb. in weight. I asked Sylvester whether the term was properly ‘junior’ or ‘Juner’ (both are recorded in angling log-books in local hotels and guest-houses). ‘It should be Juner,’ replied Sylvester decisively, ‘...because the fish start to run in June. Mind you,’ he added, ‘the fish are running later and later, so perhaps we ought to call them Augusters now....’ On the other hand, ‘junior’ is also in widespread use on Lough Currane to designate smaller sea-trout: ‘Monday 21st June. Merlens Jan and Paul De Neef from Belgium had excellent fishing with a grilse of 4.5lbs and sea trout of 1.5lbs, 3lbs and a couple of juniors.’ (Angling report, www.loughcurrane.com, accessed June 26th, 2010) The term is also used in Cork to denote smaller sea-trout: ‘July, August, and September sees the run of “juniors” as they are known locally, fish averaging 1 lb (0.4 kgs)’ (http://www.tragretreat.com/fishing-holidays.html, accessed April 9th 2011)

A ´Juner’ from Currane

May

peal

see peal. May clearly refers to the month in which the (larger) sea-trout begin to run into freshwater, so there’s a distinction between ‘May peal’ (larger, early-running sea-trout) and ‘harvest-peal’ (schools of typically smaller fish running later in the summer)

1861 edition of Newland (in The Erne: Its Legends and its Fly-Fishing, first published 1851): ‘..salmon...known by the names forktail, mort, peal, herring peal, may peal, pugg peal, harvest cock’

Now – and even though peal is still very much alive (particularly in SW England) as a fish name - obsolete as a sea-trout term?

mort OED2 suggests that the origin of the word is ‘unknown’ though it’s possible that the

OED2 defines as ‘[a] name for the salmon in its third year’ and dates the first attestation to 1530

Falkus, Sea Trout Fishing (revised 2nd edition, 1981): ‘For the uninitiated, I should explain that Smelt = Small = Herling. Mort = Big = Sea trout. (Both Cumbrian terms.)’

word derives from Old Norse mergth, ‘big’. This would be consistent with patterns of Norse migration to NW England.

(‘Morte...a fysshe’). Interestingly, a further historical illustration, from 1672, refers to the River Ribble (in NW England) and suggests that ‘salmon’ of their first year as referred to as smelts, of the second year as sprods, and in the third year – when the majority of the fish will have enjoyed at least some sea-feeding, and will therefore be slightly larger – as morts.

orange

-fin

Transparently from orange

OED2 defines as ‘a variety of trout

http://zipcodezoo.com/Animals/S/Salmo_trutta_trutta/

(colour), a word borrowed into English from Old French in the 14th century.

found in the Tweed’ and first attests the term as occurring in that context in 1834.

peal Possibly borrowed from Old French palle, ‘whitish in appearance’. Ėamon de Buitléar (personal communication, 2011) points out, however, that a Gaelic derivation might be more likely, since píl in Irish means ‘large’, and thus might well be applied to grilse

OED2 defines as ‘[a] grilse or young salmon (now esp. one under two pounds in weight)....A smaller species of salmon’. In these sense, the first attestation dates from 1533 (‘The young frye....called lakspynkes [lax+pink: McC; see tables below] smowts or salmon peale’. An attestation in 1661 is far more

The word peal is used in parts of Ireland to denote grilse or smaller salmon, rather than sea-trout. In SW England the term is used exclusively of sea-trout: ‘...fresh school peal came in on several rivers’ (Mike Weaver, Devon angling report, Trout and Salmon, November 2009, p. 85) The survival of the word in the English SW and in Ireland – areas where different dialects of Gaelic are or were once spoken - seems to indicate an origin in Gaelic rather than in Old French.

certain about relating ‘peal’ to the sea-trout: ‘the salmon peales or Sea Trouts...’

pugg-

peal

The etymology of pug(g) in the sense of ‘an imp, a dwarf animal’ is ‘unascertained’ according to OED2.

The term is first recorded in Newland, 1851 – see May peal above.

Now obsolete as a sea-trout term?

salmon

-trout

Transparently from salmon (borrowed into English from Old French saumon) and trout

Defined in OED2 as ‘[a] fish of the species Salmo trutta, resembling the salmon, found in rivers of northern Europe’, and ascribed a first attestation in 1421 ‘Frie de Samon Trought’

Also used opportunistically by fishmongers to denote sea-trout. I have even seen the term used at fish-stalls to denote what are clearly rainbow trout.

scurf No secure etymology, though the term might possibly be related to scurf in senses relating to skin. OED2 records a sense of scurf meaning ‘scales or small laminae of epidermis’, so scurf in sea-trout senses might just refer to the shining scales of the sea-run fish.

Scurf in the sense of ‘skin(-disease)’ is old: late Old English scurf, possibly modelled on or influenced by Old Norse (Old Swedish skorff). OED2 defines scurf as ‘[t]he Sea-trout, Salmo eriox or S. trutta’ and ascribes a first attestation to 1483.

Now obsolete as a sea-trout term?

sewin OED2: ‘Of obscure etymology: app[arently) not Welsh’. OED2 defines as ‘[a] fish of the

1531 (‘suwynges’)

‘..a total of 25 sewin...’ (Keith Hamlett, Dwyfor river report, Trout and Salmon, November 2009, p.86)

Salmon tribe....the bull-trout, found in Welsh rivers.’ In The Other Side of the Stream (1998) I suggested rather mischievously that perhaps the word was derived from sea+wynn, ‘wynn’ being the Old English word for ‘joy’. I made the suggestion, however mischievous, because it was such a lovely idea...but I confess it’s etymologically most unlikely.

skegge

r

(trout)

?

OED2 records ‘Of obscure origin’ – but there may be a very distant connection to skeg, a sort of wild plum, if skegger is related to the time of year when (smaller) sea-trout run into freshwater, i.e. at the time of ripening plums, late summer.

1653, Walton

Now obsolete as a sea-trout term.

smelt OE smelt, probably related to later German schmelt. OED2 defines as ‘[a] small fish, Osmerus eperlanus’ and

The term smelt (sea fish, Osmerus eperlanus) is first attested in 725. See also mort above.

notes that the term is applied ‘to other small fishes freq. to the atherine or sand-smelt. OED2 doesn’t record a sea-trout sense.

sprod ‘Of obscure origin’ (OED2).

Defined as ‘[a] salmon in its second year’, the term is first attested in 1617.

‘I had just two small grilse and a few sprods to show for my efforts’. (Andy Hurst, report on River Lune fishing, Trout and Salmon November 2009, p.86)

truff A variant spelling and pronunciation of trout. Latin tructus was borrowed into Old English, where it was spelled truht (alongside the native word for the fish,

Nall recorded the term as being used in Devon for small adult sea-trout.

sceote ‘shoat’). In some English dialects, the <h> of truht came to be pronounced ‘f’ (compare Old English genog, later English ynnogh, where the final ‘g’ or ‘gh’ also attracted pronunciations in ‘f’ (modern English ‘enough’)

white-

trout

Transparently from white+trout, probably modelled on Irish Gaelic breac geal

‘A variety of S. fario’ (OED2). The term is first attested in 1745.

The term white-trout has clearly given way to sea-trout in many parts of Ireland. As recently as 1983, Niall Fallon wrote that ‘[y]ou betray a certain lack of sensibility if in Ireland you refer to the white trout as a sea trout. For in this land of white trout he is whiter than white and is known by no other name...’ (Fly-fishing for Irish Trout, 1983, p.85) The lexical shift might well have been caused or accelerated by the sea-trout stock collapse in parts of the Irish west, a collapse popularly referred to as the ‘sea-trout crash’. The existence of groups such as Save Our Sea-trout (SOS) might also have contributed to the spread of the term sea-trout at the expense of the older white-trout.

Sign on the Newport River, 2007 Gaelic breac geal. Breac (‘trout’) survives in local place-name elements, frequently in the names of loughs (e.g. L. Nam Breac, ‘lake of the trout’).

whitlin

g

From white+ling (-ling is a suffix which carries diminutive force, see above). Alternatively, the word might be a further adaptation of the Dutch word for whiting, which

Defined in OED2 as [a] fish of the salmon family, not certainly identified; app[arently] the young of the bull-trout, Salmo eriox’. First attestation 1597-8: ‘Fo[u]r floukes and eght

Postcard from a friend fishing in NW Scotland in the 1970s. He recorded catching saithe and whitling – words which at that time I had to look up. I very much like the spelling ‘whiddelynges’.

was borrowed into English in the Middle Ages.

whiddelynges’

yellow-

fin

Transparently from yellow+fin, ‘name for various fishes with yellow fins or yellow colouration on the fins’ (OED2)

No specific sea-trout sense is recorded in OED2, but the dictionary does record a ‘yellow-finned Herring’ from 1804 and in 1904, the first attestation of ‘yellow-finned Tuna’

Now obsolete as a sea-trout term? Nall recorded the term as being in use for sea-trout parr and smolts, but I have not myself heard or read the term. Some smaller fish, however, do have a distinct orange or yellow-orange colour to their pectoral fins, so it’s clear how the term arose.

A Donegal finnock – note the yellow fins

*

That concludes a preliminary survey of sea-trout names. Next we should consider those

terms listed in Nall (1930) which are not listed above. It’s worth noticing that Nall

explicitly claimed to have composed his list from Francis Day’s Salmonidae (1887) and

Albert Wade’s ‘Salmon and sea-trout synonyms’, published in the Salmon and Trout

Magazine in 1927. Nall’s list, therefore, records the lexical distribution of sea-trout

names as this obtained in the later 19th and earlier 20th century. Some names were

doubtless becoming obsolete even as Nall recorded them.

Sea-trout names: terms from Nall (1930)

(i) terms for ‘the parr and smolt stages’ (Nall, p.309 – note that Nall suggested that ‘Many of these names are applied also to small whitling’):

herring-sprod (Cumberland); orange-fin; pink or salmon-pink; silver-grey or silver-white;

red-fin; smelt or smelt-sprod (Cumberland); sprat (Ireland); sprod (Cumberland); white-

fish (Dart, Teign and SW England); yellow-fin.

Of these terms, herring- (and the compounds of which it’s a part), orange-fin,

smelt, sprod and yellow-fin are discussed above, see also Table A. That leaves the

following terms to account for: (salmon-)pink, silver-grey( -/white), red-fin, sprat, white-

fish.

TABLE B Terms (not recorded in Table A) for parr and smolt stages (Nall,

1930)

Term Etymology First written attestation

Notes

red-fin red- is and has been for several centuries in general use to form adjectives (red-finned > red-fin).

?1803 App. no specific sea-trout sense recorded in OED2

(salmon-)pink penk was the original spelling; it was adapted to pink in the C17th. Origin obscure. ‘A young salmon before it becomes a smolt.’

1828 ‘a great many samlets or penkes’

Also recorded as a term for minnows and (along with shot and shut(te)) young grayling

silver-grey Silver- widely used in fish terms (silver salmon).

No sea-trout sense app. recorded in OED2

silver-white Transparently from the terms which make up the compound

1834. In 1884, Day in Fishes of Great Britain wrote that ‘White-salmon...is locally known as...whiting, phinock, moudie-trout, silverwhite’

sprat A later form of sprot: ‘One or other of various small fishes, usually resembling a sprat’ – in this sense from the early C17th. sprot < Old English sprot, recorded in 1000 by Aelfric.

After occurring in Aelfric, the next written attestation comes from 1110, where the term is glossed alongside hwitling – possibly the earliest occurrence of an attestation of a specific sea-trout term.

white-fish Transparently from the terms of the compound. ‘A general name for fishes of a white or light colour (esp. those having silvery scales....)’

Probably from the C15th, where whitefish crops up alongside herring.

(ii) terms for the ‘whitling stage and for smaller adult sea-trout’ (Nall, p.309; Nall suggested that ‘[m]any of these names are also applied to smaller adult [s]ea-trout and some to smolts’):

black-tail (Tweed, for smaller whitling); black-fin; black-neb; blue-cap; blue-fin; blue-

poll; buntling (Clwyd, Elwy and Chester Dee); burn-tail (Tyne); cocksper; finnoc (less

correctly finnock or finnock); gravelling or grael-laspring; gravel; hepper; herling (less

correctly harling or hirling, Solway); herring-sprod (Cumberland); Lammas-man or

Lammas-trout (Edinburgh and Forth; Lammas Day is 1 August); last-spring or laspring;

moorced; morgate; moudie-trout; phinnock, phinoc or phinock (less correct forms of

finnoc); pink or salmon-pink (for small specimens); rack-rider; red-fin (for small fish);

scad; schovl-peal (Devon); shed; silver-grey and silver-white; skagger and skegger;

skarling, skerling and skirling; sprag; truff (Devon); white-fish (Dart, Teign and SW

coast of England); whiters; whiting (old Tweed name, and on English side of Solway).

TABLE C Terms (not recorded in Tables A and B) for smaller sea-trout

Term Etymology First written attestation

Notes

black-fin App. not recorded in a sea-trout sense in OED2

blue-cap Transparent. OED: ‘A salmon in its first year...so-called because it has a blue spot on its head’

1677 Probably a term for a grilse rather than a sea-trout

blue-fin App. no sea-trout sense recorded in OED2 but blue-cocks is recorded as a term for Salmo albus (C19th, when taxonomy was getting out of hand)

blue-poll App. no sea-trout sense recorded in OED2, but clearly related to blue-cap. Poll, ‘head’ is attested in Middle English < obsolete Dutch polle, ‘summit/top of head’, first

attestation 1290 buntling App. no sea-trout

sense recorded in OED2, but possibly related to bunting (a term of endearment – ‘Cry, baby bunting’) or possibly buntin meaning ‘short and thick’ (thus buntin brat = plump child). See also gwyniad.

burntail App. no sea-trout sense recorded in OED2

cocksper App. no sea-trout sense recorded in OED2. ? related to cockspur, a kind of caddis larva used in angling (and recorded by Walton) – and thus to the fish those larvae are used to catch?

grael-laspring See gravel, gravelling, laspring, last-spring

gravel Possibly a re-formation from gravelling (see row below)

gravelling OED2: ‘Of obscure origin; Old French had gravele as a name of some fish, perh. the minnow’

1587 ‘salmon in the first year a grauellin’

hepper No etymology given

1861 ‘Local name of a smolt’

Lammas-man App. no sea-trout sense in OED2. The lexical timing

of the term is right, though, since Lammas derives from hlāf + mass (‘loaf-mass’) and fell on August 1st, a date used by the early church as a harvest festival.

laspring Possibly from lax+pink (‘salmon’ + ‘small and shining’, see (salmon-) penk, -pink above)

last-spring See laspring 1760 moorced App. no sea-trout

sense in OED2 morgate App. no sea-trout

sense in OED2 moudie-trout Odd, because

moudie is a dialectal term for the mole (and the mole-catcher). It’s difficult to see how the term came to be applied to a fish. The only explanation I can think of is fanciful: the sea-trout, like the mole, moves under the cover of darkness.

App. no sea-trout sense in OED2, but the term is recorded, along with white salmon (see silver-white above) in 1882

rack-rider App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

scad From Old English scædd, possibly related to (or borrowed from?) Welsh sgadan, ‘herring’. OE scaedd gives us shad, since what was spelled <sc> in

1861 ‘All migratory fish of the genus salmon, whether known by the names...shed, scad, blue fin, black tip, fingerling....or by any other local name’

OE was pronounced ‘sh’ (thus e.g. OE biscop, ‘bishop’)

schovl-peal Probably a variant spelling of ‘school’, or just possibly of ‘shoal’ (via the spelling <schoul>).

shed See scad and the note there on shad

skarling/skerling/skirling ‘Of obscure origin. A young salmon, a samlet, sparling’. 1776

Words spelled with <sk> very often have an origin in Old Norse and were borrowed into English as part of the Norse settlements of parts of the north of England and southern Scotland - but no Norse cognates apparently exist (?)

sprag ‘Of obscure origin.’ OED2 records two senses: (1) ‘A lively young fellow’ and (2) ‘A young salmon’

1790, then 1882, where the term is recorded as specifically Northumbrian.

(iii) terms for adult sea-trout (Nall, pp.309-10):

bill (for ripe fish, Tweed, Esk); bourge-trout (Hants); brith-dail (Wales); budge (S

England, for large sea-trout); bull-trout (for large and coarse sea-trout); Candlemas-grey

(for a sea-trout kelt, Cumberland and Westmoreland; Candlemas falls on 2 February);

cochivie or cockivie (mouth of Tees); core or chor (Usk and Wye); Fordwich trout

(Sussex); fork-tail; gwyniad (for young sea-trout, according to Day, in Teifi); grey-trout

or grey-salmon (old Tweed name); mort and salmon-mort (Cumberland); peal (with

many additions e.g. salmon-peal, May-peal, Harvest-peal, pug-peal (Devon and SW

coast of England – Nall (p.310) also notes that in Ireland, peal are grilse, and sea-trout

are often called trout-peal); pug; pug-salmon (Devon); round-tail, for larger sea-trout

(Tweed and Northumberland); salmon-trout; schooler; scurf, scurve or salmon-scurf

(Tees); sewen or sewin (Wales); truff (for small sea-trout (Devon); twbs and twb-y-dail

(Teifi, according to Day); white-trout (the usual name in Ireland). (Note: Nall further

recorded that slob-trout ‘is a name applied to river trout which are found in salt water’.)

TABLE D Terms (not recorded in Tables A, B or C) for adult sea-trout

Term Etymology First written attestation

Notes

bill App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

bourge-trout App. no sea-trout senses in OED2

brith-dail App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

budge App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

Candlemas-grey Odd, since Candlemas falls on February 2nd. If this was a term for the sea-trout, perhaps a reference either to a particular kind of kelt or possibly to large, early-run sea-trout in the Tweed and its tributaries?

cochive/cockivie App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

core/chor App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

gwyniad Adapted from Welsh gwyn, ‘white’ ‘All migratory fish of the

1611 Properly a term for one of the true whitefish

genus salmon, whether known by the names...white trout, sewin, buntling, gwyniad...or by any other local name.’

(Coregonus), but perhaps recorded as a sea-trout term by Nall since it occurs in a parliamentary bill within a context that includes names designating the salmon and sea-trout.

round-tail Round- has been used to form generic adjectives from the C17th.

Larger sea-trout, particularly those weighing towards (or over) 10lb., occasionally have a convex edge to their tail fin.

schooler App. no sea-trout sense in OED2. Oddly, OED2 also appears not to record schoolie in the sense ‘school bass’

twbs App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

twb-y-dail App. no sea-trout sense in OED2

*

If anyone had asked me, back in 1998 when I made that first, provisional list of sea-trout

names in The Other Side of the Stream, just how many names the sea-trout enjoyed or

had enjoyed, I would have hazarded ‘around....fifty?’ The correct answer seems to be

‘probably more than seventy’, since a minimum of seventy terms are recorded in Tables

A-D, summarised below in a very slightly augmented Table E, to which I’ve added the

common terms kelt and sea-trout together with two new terms certainly in use in Ireland,

clown and slanger, which last terms are explored below.:

TABLE E Summary: names of the sea-trout

The table includes almost all the names used of sea-trout, including names which are or which have been perhaps erroneously applied. The list includes terms for juvenile fish and kelted fish (the last represented by the terms clown – see Aii. and C. below - kelt and slanger): bill black-fin black-neb black-tail blackberry trout blue-cap blue-fin blue-poll bourge-trout brith-dail budge bull-trout buntling burntail Candlemas-grey clown cockivie cocksper core/chor finnock fork-tail grael-laspring gravel gravelling grey-trout harvest-cock harvester hepper herling herring-peal gwyniad junior/Juner kelt Lammas-man laspring last-spring May peal moorced morgate

mort moudie-trout orange-fin peal pugg-peal rack-rider red-fin round-tail (salmon-)pink salmon-trout scad scurf schooler schovl-peal sea-trout sewin shed silver-grey silver-white skarling/skerling/skirling skegger (trout)? slanger slat slob trout smelt sprag sprat sprod truff twbs twb-y-dail white-fish white-trout whitling yellow-fin

Of the above list, several categories can be distinguished, as follows:

A. Terms definitely in use

A(i). Terms spreading in lexical range: herling (orinally a Solway term, now used

quite widely throughout the UK and Ireland of juvenile sea-trout and also heard in parts

of Northern Ireland, where it is lexically colliding with and possibly replacing the term

finnock); sea-trout (the general term for the fish, a term spreading in range in Ireland,

possibly as a result of the ‘Save Our Sea-trout’ [SOS] campaign of the 1990s, and

apparently ousting white-trout).

The unmarked (probably most widely distributed, least dialect-specific) terms for

juvenile and adult sea-trout, respectively, seem to be: herling, sea-trout

A(ii). Terms steady or declining in range: black-neb (also neb; localised to Loch

Lomond?), bull trout (Northumberland, more often used to designate what local anglers

believe are salmon/brown trout hybrids), clown (only in the south-east of Ireland, from

south Dublin to Wexford, and a term whose origin and etymology is explored in C.

below), finnock (used of post-smolts widely in the north and west of Scotland [usually

north of Glasgow?] and in some parts of Northern Ireland), harvester (? still in use),

junior/Juner (in widespread use in but localised to Kerry and Cork), kelt (used almost

universally of sea-trout which have spawned; also used of brown trout and of salmon),

mort (localised to the English north-west, from southern Lancashire up to but not

including the Scottish coast of the Solway), orange-fin (found in only one web entry,

thus becoming obsolete?), peal (localised to the English south-west – Cornwall, Devon

and perhaps western Dorset; in the same region, school peal is still in use to designate

sea-trout between 1-2lb.), sewin (localised to Wales, and generally used of adult sea-

trout), slanger (only one written reference, in 2010; used only of kelt sea-trout, and

apparently confined to Wexford - ? an idiolectal term?), slob trout (now used fairly

widely to designate brown trout resident for all or part of the year in saltwater, usually

estuaries), sprod (localised to the English north-west – the same range as mort – and used

to designate juvenile sea-trout), white-trout (still widely distributed on the island of

Ireland, but probably giving way to the term sea-trout), whitling (used in parts of

Scotland to designate juvenile sea-trout, though giving way to herling?)

Terms in use in dialects (unambiguous and non-idiolectal sea-trout terms only)

appear to be: (black-)neb (Scotland – Loch Lomond area), clown (in south-east

Ireland), finnock (Scotland/Ireland), junior/Juner (Irish south-west), mort (north-

west England), (school) peal (English south-west – used in Ireland to denote grilse or

salmon), sewin (Wales), sprod (north-west England), white-trout (Ireland), whitling

(northern Scotland/Borders)

B. Terms no longer in use

Except where indicated, I have never heard these terms, or seen them used

contemporaneously of sea-trout, in over forty years’ fishing and angling reading (c.1970-

2012):

bill, black-fin, blue-cap, black-tail, blue-cap, blue-fin, blue-poll, bourge-trout, brith-dail, budge, buntling, burntail, Candlemas-grey, cockivie, cocksper, core/chor fork-tail grael-laspring, gravel, gravelling, grey-trout, harvest-cock, hepper, herring-peal, gwyniad, Lammas-man, laspring, last-spring, May peal (though peal is most certainly in use), moorced, morgate, moudie-trou, pugg-peal (though see peal, which is very much alive in south-west England and is still used in Ireland as a term for (salmon) grilse), rack-rider, red-fin,round-tail, (salmon-)pink, salmon-trout (used only, and almost always indiscriminately, by fishmongers, sometimes to label rainbow trout), scad, scurf, schooler (though school peal is still alive in the West Country to denote juvenile sea-trout typically between 1-2lb.), shed, silver-grey, silver-white, skarling/skerling/skirling, skegger (trout), smelt (used of Osmerus eperlanus, but no longer in use as a sea-trout term, possibly in order to avoid a lexical clash?), sprag, sprat (used of other small fish, but not now as a specific sea-trout term, possibly to avoid a lexical clash, see also smelt), truff (which Nall recorded as in use in Devon in the late 19th century, so this may be a recent scrap of obsolescence), twbs, twb-y-dail, white-fish (now used of the true white-fishes, the Coregonus species, but not of sea-trout), yellow-fin

C. Terms not apparently recorded elsewhere

blackberry trout: a term from the Argideen river, Co. Cork. The Argideen Anglers’ Association guide to the Argideen (2011) states that school sea-trout ‘are often called “blackberry trout”.’ These largely immature young sea-trout, that is, run into freshwater at the time when the blackberries are ripening – in later July and August. clown: I first came across this term, which is used exclusively of herling, in the south-east of Ireland in 2011. I have never seen the term written; it appears to be exclusively oral. The geographical spread of the term seems to be limited to south Dublin through Wicklow, Arklow and Kilkenny. I was very puzzled about the possible etymology of this word: ‘clown’? Clownish antics? Foolish > naïve? It took a native speaker of Irish, Ėamon de Buitléar, to put me right. Seizing immediately on the fact that the word is often pronounced as disyllabic (‘clow-en’, /n/), Ėamon unhesitatingly postulated a derivation from Irish. On August 11th, 2011, we received an email from Ėamon concerning this etymology: In case Chris needs the Irish version of the trout that the anglers and poachers on the Dargle always referred to as a clown - CAILE ABHANN - River Maiden. CAILE (girl or maiden) and ABHANN (gen. case of abhainn, river). So a ‘clown’ is, rather beautifully, a ‘river maiden’, i.e. a sea-trout, encountered in freshwater, that hasn’t yet spawned. slanger: apparently a Wexford term for a kelt sea-trout. I have only come across this term once, in a comment on a website photograph: ‘Most of those seatrout in the photos are slangers…. They have just returned to the estuary after spawning’. (http://grahamhillirishfishing.blogspot.com/2009/03/wexford-sea-trout-bass-anglers-dream.html, accessed April 9th 2011; comment posted on April 26th, 2010) slat: encountered on the Argideen river, Co. Cork: ‘In March and April some fish can be seen in the river but these are fish which have spawned last autumn (slats) and are making their way slowly back to sea’ (Argideen Anglers’ Association guide to the Argideen, 2011). The earliest reference I’ve been able to trace for this term, which clearly denotes the thinness of the fish (cf. a ‘slatted blind’), I found in the game books at Screebe House in Connemara, which I visited in 2012. In the 1892 season, anglers had recorded catching numerous sea-trout in the lower parts of the Screebe fishery in April. Below these entries, and in pencil, an unknown hand has written, possibly contemptuously, ‘Slats for sure’.

Slats for sure