NAMES OF THE WEEK from:  2013   2014   2015   2016   2017   2018   2019   2020  2021  2022  2023  2024

5 March
Latropiscis Whitley 1931

I have two explanations for this name. One that’s reasonable. One that’s far-fetched … but much more fun to ponder.

Right now I am revising the etymologies of all the genus- and species-level names in the Order Aulopiformes. In doing so, I am re-researching names I couldn’t figure out during my first pass through the order. Here’s how I explained the generic name of Latropiscis purpurissatus, the Sergeant Baker, a species of flagfin (Aulopidae) endemic to Australia:

etymology not explained, perhaps latro, hireling, robber or brigand, and piscis, fish, or perhaps la-, very, tropis, keel and piscis, fish; in either case, allusion not evident

British-born Australian ichthyologist and malacologist Gilbert Percy Whitley (1903–1975) proposed the genus Latropiscis in 1931. Whitley has been the subject of several NOTW entries. He is a master of the enigmatic name.

Revisiting my 2016 entry for Latropiscis, I dispensed with the amateurish la + tropis explanation. Instead, I focused on the meaning of the Latin word latro. In addition to hireling, robber or brigand, the word can also mean mercenary or hunter. With an expanded definition of the word, I then scoured subsequent publications by Whitley that I had acquired since first researching the name. Sometimes Whitley, years after the fact, explained the meaning of one of his enigmatic names (see Milyeringa veritas, NOTW 8 March 2017). Such was not the case with Latropiscis. But in a 1966 publication written for a popular audience (Marine Fishes of Australia Volume I, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane, 142 pp.), Whitley said the Sergeant Baker “lurks amongst rocks and weeds.” Indeed, the fish is a benthic ambush predator that feeds on molluscs, crustaceans, and other fishes that live on the reef and soft-bottomed inshore waters up to 250 m deep. Since “latro” can mean “hunter,” that seems a reasonable explanation for Latropiscis: hunter + fish. “Lurks amongst rocks and weeds” evokes an image of a hunter lying in wait for the game.

As reported in previous NOTWs, Whitley was fond of coining names with historical and literary references (see Kyphosus cornelii, NOTW 9 Dec. 2020, and Malvoliophis, NOTW 7 Feb. 2024). Since Latropiscis purpurissatus has long been known among Australian anglers as the Sergeant Baker, might the name be a nod to Sergeant Baker, whoever he might be? Was Sergeant Baker a hireling? A robber? A brigand? A mercenary or a hunter? And why was this fish named after him?

Based on various Australian sources, I learned that the Sergeant Baker is believed to have been named for William Baker (c. 1761—1836), a New South Wales Marine and member of the First Fleet that founded the European penal colony of New South Wales. Described as an enthusiastic fisherman, Baker may have been the first European to catch this fish. While not a mercenary, Baker, after his Marine service, was something of a “robber.” In 1797, he was convicted of stealing a boat, and, in 1810, was dismissed from a government post for misappropriating supplies from the government store. Whitley mentioned Baker in the above-cited work but had only this to say: “Sergeant William Baker, an early colonist of Norfolk Island, must have been a florid and perhaps choleric gentleman for this rubicund fish to have been named after him.”

While I like the idea of Latropiscis being named for Sergeant Baker, the evidence is flimsy and the connection far-fetched. The evidence for the hunter + fish explanation, while still circumstantial, at least connects the behavior of the fish with Whitley’s “lurks amongst rocks and weeds” comment published 35 years later. Still, I enjoyed learning about Sergeant Baker’s obscure role in early Australian history. Even when an etymological lead is a dead-end, it is still fun to pursue.

Note: the specific epithet purpurissatus, proposed by Scottish surgeon-naturalist John Richardson (1787–1865) in 1843, is Latin for clothed or painted in purple, referring to its “general” body coloration.

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26 February
Merluccius merluccius (Linnaeus 1758)

The European Hake Merluccius merluccius occurs in the eastern North Atlantic and Mediterranean. The etymology of its tautonymous name has long been reported as “sea pike”: a combination of mare, Latin for sea, and lucius, Latin for an undetermined species of fish, usually applied to the pike. The name is said to refer to the hake’s superficial resemblance to the Northern Pike Esox lucius. But according to Holger Funk, our resident scholar of ancient fish names, this interpretation is almost certainly incorrect.

The “sea-pike” explanation dates to two important early works on ichthyology: Belon’s De aquatilibus (1553) and Rondelet’s Libri de piscibus marinis (1554). But Dr. Funk notes that some Latin texts — e.g., Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, Ovid’s Halieuticon and Varro’s Lingua Latina — refer to the fish as “merula.” In Renaissance Europe, the fish was known as merle, merlan and regional variations thereof. What does “merula” mean? It’s the Latin word for the Common Blackbird Turdus merula, another example of the frequent transfer of a terrestrial animal’s name to the name of a fish (which, by the way, has never occurred in the opposite direction).

The obvious question is: Why did the ancients name a fish that is brownish-gray for a bird that is black? Dr. Funk’s answer is that blackbirds exhibit sexual dimorphism. Males are black, females are brownish-gray.

So how did merula become merluccius? And how did “blackbird” become “sea-pike”? The answer for both appears to be the Italian version of merula — merluzzo (and other similar spellings). One can imagine that “merluccius” is a Latinization of “merluzzo.” And from there it’s easy to mistranslate “merluccius” as mare (sea) + lucius (pike). Since the European Hake is superficially similar to a pike, the explanation seems reasonable. But as Dr. Funk tells us, the “sea-pike” explanation is, linguistically, “based on very thin ice.”

“Merula” appears in the name of another gadiform (cod-like) fish from the eastern North Atlantic and Mediterranean, the Whiting or Merling Merlangius merlangus (Linnaeus 1758). The name is also applied to the Brown Wrasse Labrus merula Linnaeus 1758. In this case, the name appears to refer to the blackbird’s male (rather than female) coloration. Older specimens of Labrus merula are blackish-blue.

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19 February
Channa amphibeus (McClelland 1845)

Last month, a team of researchers from India reported the rediscovery of the Chel Snakehead Channa amphibeus, which they describe as the “world’s most elusive snakehead species.” The snakehead was officially described by John McClelland, a British medical doctor who worked for the East India Company between 1830 and 1850, based on a specimen collected from the vicinity of the Chel River basin at the foot of the Boutan mountains in Bengal, India. Channa amphibeus was last recorded from specimens collected in the years between 1918 and 1933, leading to fears that it had gone extinct. One explanation for the apparent rarity of the species is reflected in the name McClelland chose for it: amphibeus, from amphi– (ἁμφί), double, and bíos (βίος), life.

McClelland was struck by the fact that the fish appears to live both on land and in water. It occurs near the Chail (now Chel) River, he writes, but “sometimes it is met with as much as two miles from the bank of the river, where it penetrates into holes in the ground. From these it probably emerges when the ground is inundated during heavy rain, like the species of this genus so frequently found on the surface of the earth, as if they had fallen from the clouds.” (I love this image, “as if they had fallen from the clouds.” Such colorful writing is eschewed in contemporary taxonomic descriptions.)

McClelland continues:

The natives of Boutan [now Bhutan] know so well the ground in which to find these fish, that they dig them out from their holes in the following manner: a stick is passed into the suspected hole, and the earth raised sometimes to a depth of nineteen feet. When water makes its appearance the operations are suspended, and a little cow-dung is dropped into the well, this attracts the fish from their hiding place into the well, when they are easily secured. They are said to be usually found in pairs, each fish weighing about 4 lbs., and sometimes as much as two feet in length.

As you can see from the photograph, Channa amphibeus is a beautiful fish. Aquarium traders and fish hobbyists have been searching for it for decades, with no success, leading to fears that it was “lost” or extinct. But sometimes “lost” species are just exceptionally difficult to find. During a field survey in September and November 2024, three specimens of C. amphibeus were procured from a local fisher. Its apparent rarity in collections is due to a poor understanding of its fossorial (burrowing) behavior — adults live as pairs during the dry season in submerged holes originally created (and later abandoned) by crabs — and an absence of comprehensive and targeted surveys throughout its natural range. Based on information from local fishers in the region where C. amphibeus was rediscovered, the species is relished as a local delicacy.

For details on the etymological enigma of the generic name Channa, see the Name of the Week for 19 August 2020.

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12 February
Leporinus lignator Boaretto, Ohara, Souza-Shibatta & Birindelli 2025

Considering the massive deforestation taking place in the Brazilian Amazon, my first thought about the name of Leporinus lignator, a new species of headstander (Anostomidae), was “Why?” Since lignator is Latin for one who cuts wood — in other words, a lumberjack — why would anyone honor the people whose activities are destroying this fish’s habitat and/or the habitat of thousands of other fish and non-fish species? But once I read the “etymology” section of the description, however, my anxiety about the name was proven to be baseless. In fact, the authors’ selection of the lignator epithet is actually quite clever.

In the authors’ words:

“The specific epithet, lignator, is allusive to its type-locality, the Machado River, part of the Madeira River basin. In Portuguese, Machado means axe, and Madeira means wood. Lignator is Latin (m.) for a lumberjack who cuts trees into logs, often using axes. A noun in apposition.”

While I admire the cleverness behind the name, I still had fears about the conservation status of the species. After all, the formal descriptions of many Neotropical fishes conclude with dire words about their long-term survivability in the wild due to deforestation, dams or other anthropogenic impacts. Is Leporinus lignator subject to the same fate? Again, the authors allayed my fears. They write:

“Leporinus lignator is known only from a few specimens collected in a few sites, all of which are located in areas relatively well-preserved and close to several preservation areas, including the Parque do Aripuanã, the Parque Estudual de Corumbiara, and many indigenous regions. Therefore, although the species distribution is poorly known, we suggest that the conservation status of Leporinus lignator is likely to be Least Concern (LC) at this moment, according to IUCN criteria (IUCN, 2022).”

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5 February
Apistus shaula Matsunuma, Seah & Motomura 2024

The “etymology” section of a contemporary new-taxa description has two objectives: (1) Explain the derivation of the word(s) that comprises the name. (2) Explain how the name relates to the taxon being described. Sometimes, however, the author(s) of the new taxon do not meet objective #2. They tell us what the name means but not why that name was selected. The recently described Spotted-fin Waspfish Apistus shaula, known only from the northern Arabian Sea, is a case in point. The “etymology” section says:

“The name shaula, treated as a noun in apposition, refers to the second brightest object in the constellation Scorpius.”

That’s an interesting name. But what does it mean? Why is this fish — only the second species of its genus and a distant relative of the venomous Stonefish Synanceia horrida — named for a celestial object?

When the author(s) of enigmatic names are deceased, I try to make an educated guess about their meanings, analyzing textual clues, other taxa that have the same name, or later publications by the same author(s) in which explanations or additional clues may be given. Such names have formed the subjects of many “Names of the Week.” But when the authors are alive and well, I simply send them an email. One well-known ichthyologist (I won’t say who) routinely ignores my inquiries. Another well-known ichthyologist tells me his names are “personal” and that he prefers them to remain enigmatic (but often explains them anyway). In the case of Apistus shaula, the first author, Mizuki Matsunuma of the Kyoto University Museum in Japan, wrote me back almost immediately.

According to Dr. Matsunuma, “shaula” has two explanations relative to the fish: (1) the name alludes to the adjective “second” — the second species of Apistus and the second-brightest star in the constellation Scorpius. (2) “Shaula” comes from the Arabic language and this new species is most likely endemic to the Arabian Sea.

I noticed another possible though tenuous connection between the celestial and ichthyological names. Shaula is also known as Lambda Scorpii (its Bayer designation, a Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive form of the parent constellation’s Latin name). The constellation is Scorpius. Until 2017 or so, the stonefishes (including Apistus) had been considered a subfamily (Synanceiinae) of the scorpionfishes (Scorpaenidae).

Scorpii. Scorpius. Scorpionfish.

Coincidence?

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29 January
Opistognathus cryos Su & Ho 2024   

Last week we stated that the clingfish Melanophorichthys priscillae is the first (and only) fish species named after a movie. This recently described species of jawfish from Taiwan also has a nomenclatural connection to the cinema.

Opistognathus cryos was discovered on a beach in the northern por­tion of Peng-hu, a group of small islands in the Taiwan Strait off western Tai­wan in the Pacific Ocean. The holotype had washed ashore, along with many other coral-reef fishes, frozen to death when a February 2022 cold snap hit Penghu. For this reason, the authors named the fish cryos, from the Greek krýos (κρύος), meaning icy cold, chill or frost, but used by the authors as an adjective (cold or chilled). The authors also proposed the common name “Frozen Clingfish” for obvious reasons, but mentioned another, perhaps superfluous, reason as well.

“Frozen Clingfish” also refers to the 2013 animated Disney film “Frozen.”

Let it go, let it go
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand in the light of day
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway

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22 January
Melanophorichthys priscillae Conway, Moore & Summers 2024   

Three fishes have been named after characters in movies: two from Star Wars: A New Hope (Romanogobio skywalkeri, Peckoltia greedoi) and one from a 2010 Japanese animated fantasy film The Secret World of Arrietty (Malthopsis arrietty). This newly described clingfish is, I believe, the first time a fish has been named not after a character in a movie, but the movie itself.

Melanophorichthys priscillae inhabits dense seagrass meadows in waters up to 15 m along the coast of Western Australia. It is named for the 1994 Australian road comedy film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which details the journey of three heroines (two drag queens and a transgender woman) as they travel across the Australian continent in a bus named Priscilla. The name, per the authors, alludes to the bright life colors of males. As a still (shown here) from the film indicates, the male characters are indeed brightly attired.

The proposed common name is Queen Grass Clingfish.

One could make the case that Melanophorichthys priscillae is not named after the film, but for the eponymous bus in the film. If that’s the case, I can say without hesitation that this would be the first fish species in the history of fishes to be named … after a bus.

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15 January
Cobitis beijingensis Sun & Zhao 2025

Every year we highlight the first-described new fish species of the New Year. For 2025 it is Cobitis beijingensis.

Cobitis is a genus of loaches (Cobitidae) found in temperate and subtropical waters from Europe and Northern Africa to Asia. ETYFish records 124 species and four currently valid subspecies in the genus. With the addition of C. beijingensis, the total is now 125 species (with more to be described). As the Latin suffix –ensis (from) suggests, C. beijingensis hails from Beijing, the capital city of China. You can read the original description here.

The generic name Cobitis is from kōbī́tis (κωβῖτις), an ancient Greek name for small fishes that bury in the bottom and/or are like a gudgeon or a goby. The name was first applied to loaches — for what is now known as Cobitis taenia Linnaeus 1758 — by the Renaissance scholar Rondelet in 1555.

According to Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes, 406 new species were described in 2024. By our unofficial count, 37.4% of these new species belong to these five families:

Nemacheilidae … 39 new species
Oxudercidae … 38 new species
Gobiidae … 31 new species
Trichomycteridae … 24 new species
Cyprinidae … 20 new species

These diverse families keep us very busy every year updating the ETYFish Project website and database. We don’t expect that to change in 2025.

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8 January
William N. Eschmeyer (1939–2024) and “Cofish”

William N. “Bill” Eschmeyer passed away peacefully on 30 December after a long illness. I wrote about Dr. Eschmeyer and his achievements when the “Name of the Week” celebrated his 80^th birthday in 2019 (11 Feb. entry). His obituary, prepared by his family, is presented in its entirety below. Today I would like to honor Dr. Eschmeyer and his magisterial “Catalog of Fishes” by solving a nomenclatural mystery of sorts: the origin and meaning of the common name “Cofish” for the monotypic genus Eschmeyer Poss & Springer 1983, the only member of the stonefish subfamily Eschmeyerinae.

Eschmeyer nexus is known from only one specimen, a mature female 41.3 mm SL, taken in 27-43 m from Ono-i-lau in the Lau Islands, Fiji. Stuart G. Poss and Victor G. Springer named the genus in honor of Dr. Eschmeyer for his contribution to the study of scorpaenid fishes. The specific name nexus is from the Latin nectere, to tie or connect, referring to a combination of features that suggest a close relationship to several groups of scorpaenoids. The genus was placed into its own family, Eschmeyeridae, by S. A. Mandrysta in 2001. The family is now considered a subfamily of the stonefish family Synanceiidae.

Poss & Springer did not propose a common name for Eschmeyer nexus. I first encountered the common name “Cofish” for the family in the fifth edition of Nelson’s Fishes of the World (2016). I immediately noticed that the name included what appears to be an acronym of the Catalog of Fishes, COF. Is this a tribute to Dr. Eschmeyer and, if so, who came up with it? I asked Mark V. H. Wilson, one of the authors of Fishes of the World, where he got the name. He said I was not the first person to ask him this question. In fact, a previous enquirer wondered if “Cofish” is a typo. If so, a typo of what? Dr. Wilson could not say for sure where he saw the name, but guessed that he consulted FishBase and used the common name found there.

I posed the same question to Stuart Poss, who co-described the genus in 1983. Neither he, nor his co-author, proposed the common name. It “sounds like an Internet-generated error,” Dr. Poss wrote me. “Cofish – a fish that is not quite a fish but rather a cofish.”

I asked FishBase about the name and, yes, someone associated with the site coined the name as a tribute to Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes. The person responsible asked that their identity not be revealed.

Note: The Wikipedia entry for Eschmeyer nexus says Mandrysta suggested the English common name “Cofish” in his 2001 monograph, citing The ETYFish Project as the source. This is incorrect. Mandrytsa did not propose any common names and we’ve never credited him with this one.

William N. Eschmeyer (1939–2024)

Bill Eschmeyer was born in 1939 in Knoxville, TN to Reuben and Ruth Eschmeyer. He spent his early years in Norris, TN where his father was the head of fisheries for the Tennessee Valley Authority, a major project of the New Deal. After Reuben suffered a fatal heart attack in 1955, Bill’s mother moved Bill and his two sisters to Maryland. Ruth raised her three children as a single mother, working full time to put all three of her children through college. Bill spent his undergrad years at the University of Michigan where he followed in his father’s footsteps to pursue a degree in marine biology. He went on to complete his doctorate at the University of Miami. In 1967, he married and moved to California, where he began his career with the California Academy of Sciences. He spent 40 years at the Academy as curator of fishes.

During his career, Bill co-wrote a popular book on fish, the Peterson Field Guide to Pacific Coast Fishes, and a total of 61 scholarly articles on fish taxonomy, but his true life’s work was creating the worldwide fish database known as the Catalog of Fishes, first published in 1990. It is difficult to underestimate the Catalog’s importance for Ichthyology, as it is the resource that everyone relies on in the field and is unique in being the only such database for vertebrate animals. For his work in systematics, Bill was awarded two lifetime achievement awards. The first was the Bleeker Award for Excellence in Indo-Pacific Ichthyology in 2009 for a “lifetime distinguished accomplishments and great contributions in the study of fish systematics in the Indo-Pacific region.” In 2019, he was awarded the Joseph S. Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in Ichthyology from the American Academy of Ichthyologists and herpetologists. The California Academy of Sciences renamed the Catalog to Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes in 2019. 

Bill was especially proud that he visited every museum in the world that held a collection with type specimens (the original specimens used when describing new species). He traveled to 6 continents and well over 100 countries. He enjoyed sharing the world with his three children. He took his younger daughter on a 6-week research trip to Europe while she was in college, and later, he took all his children and their partners on several international adventures, including a memorable trip to Tahiti in 1999.

Outside of work, Bill was an avid golfer, and he even returned to Tennessee to live on a golf course for several years in the early 2000s before neuropathy in his hand forced him to give up golf for good. But the thing that he never wanted to give up was the Catalog of Fishes. In 2011, well after his official retirement, he moved to Gainesville, FL where the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida gave him an office and a computer and the title of research associate. He continued to work on keeping the Catalog updated until 2018, when his health challenges made the work too difficult. Colleagues continue to keep the Catalog up to date and it continues to be hosted by the California Academy of Sciences. 

Bill moved to Massachusetts in 2018 to spend his final years near his youngest child and his three grandchildren. He was honored to learn that his eldest granddaughter is interested in fisheries biology and spent the past summer studying salmonid diseases at the University of Maine. She was equally delighted to find her grandfather’s name referenced in a paper she was reading for her internship. 

Bill is survived by his two sisters, Barbara Richards and Jane Marrs; his children Lisa Eschmeyer and husband Mark Meehan; David Eschmeyer; and Lanea Tripp and husband Simon; as well as his three grandchildren Nora, Braden, and Elizabeth Tripp.

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1 January
Chromis abadhah Rocha, Pinheiro, Najeeb, Rocha & Shepherd 2024

In naming this new species of damselfish, the authors express a hope for the future that seems appropriate for this, the first day of 2025.

“We also hope that this species and its habitat remain perpetual.”

The specific name of the species — abadhah (pronounced aa-BAH-duh) — means “perpetual” in Dhiveli, the local language of the Maldives. The fish occurs in deep-sea coral reefs throughout the Maldivian Archipelago, often in areas with small crevices and caves located close to large numbers of sponges. The holotype was caught using a hand net at approximately 101 m below the water’s surface, in the mesophotic zone, where sunlight is limited.

The authors chose the name in recognition of the Rolex Perpetual Planet initiative, which funded the expedition that led to its discovery. The grant was awarded to the study’s lead author, Luiz Rocha, the Follett Chair of Ichthyology and Curator of Fishes at the California Academy of Sciences. The fish’s proposed English common name is Perpetual Chromis.

Despite being relatively unexplored and hard to reach, deep-sea coral reefs in the eastern Pacific, eastern Atlantic and Indian Ocean are far from pristine. Every time they dive there, Dr. Rocha and his team see the impact of human beings. Fishing lines. Nets. Ropes. Coral bleaching. Hence the authors’ “hope that this species and its habitat remain perpetual.”

Just so you know, Rolex’s Oyster Perpetual Deepsea watches start at $14,150. The 44 mm yellow-gold model sells for $54,200.

Happy New Year!