In David Quammen’s NYRB review (Nov. 8, 2018) of Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution, by Menno Schilthuizen, he writes:
And then there’s a humble little fish called the mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus), a bottom-wallowing native of brackish waters along the Eastern Seaboard, including big urban ports such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, that are silted up with decades of toxic chemicals such as PCBs and other industrial waste. A genetic study of Bridgeport’s mummichogs, Schilthuizen reports, found genome changes that protect those fish from the effects of PCBs. Who says there’s no good news in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London?
I found the word mummichog enchanting; I looked it up in the OED (entry updated March 2003), where it is defined as:
A killifish; esp. Fundulus heteroclitus (family Cyprinodontidae), a small marine killifish of sheltered parts of the east coast of North America, which has dark and silvery vertical bars on the sides and is often kept in aquaria or used as bait.
The first and last citations are:
1787 T. Pennant Arctic Zool. II. Suppl. 149 Inhabits New York, where it is known by the Indian name of Mummy Chog.
1851 M. H. Perley Rep. New Brunswick (1852) 194 It [sc. the striped Killifish] is also known by its Indian name of ‘mummachog’, corrupted by the English settlers on the Gulf shore of New Brunswick, where it abounds, to ‘mammychub’.
[…]
1977 Audubon Sept. 8/1 The first modification of my reverent attitude resulted from my need for mummichogs, alias killifish.
1987 J. Hersey Blues (1988) 82 A handful of mummichogs, robust and chubby four-and five-inch light brown fish with dark bars along their flanks..swam downward from the surface.
The etymology is “< Narragansett moamitteaũg, plural (1643 in R. Williams A Key into the Language of America)”; I guess it’s not further analyzable, which is a pity. As for the almost as delightful killifish, the best the lexicographers can do is (in the words of the AHD) “Perhaps KILL² [i.e., ‘creek’] + FISH.”
Many sites seem to say that it means “going in crowds”. The earliest source I can see for this is this 1926 book on Marine Fishes by Nichols and Breder:
This 2001 book, Introduction to the Narragansett Language: A Study of Roger Williams’ A Key into the Language of America by Moondancer (Francis Joseph O’Brien, Jr) and Strong Woman (Julianne Jennings) goes through Williams’ text explaining many of the Narragansett terms and says of moamitteaûg (see p.88 of 143, footnote 617):
From Trumbull’s dictionary of the closely related Natick:
>From Trumbull’s dictionary of the closely related Natick:
Your post adds something. It’s worth noting that Trumbull’s “R.W. 105” refers this back to the Roger Williams book referenced in the post.
Dissenter, founder of Rhode Island (sort of), author of the first dictionary of a native language (per Wiki, maybe “in English”?), “he tutored John Milton in Dutch and American Indian languages in exchange for refresher lessons in Hebrew.”
It’s a pretty good career.
Killifish is from the Dutch kil ‘creek’, as in Schuylkill or the Catskills.
No relation to the murder hornet.
From Trumbull’s dictionary of the closely related Natick… From mohmoeaü; pass. and mutual form, mohmoitteauog, they go gathered together or in great numbers.
Thank you for finding this, Y! It’s very satisfying.
any relation to place-names like Pachaug in CT (or any other -chaugs , -chogues, etc. out there?)
also, is there a name for pairs of compound words made of the same elements reversed, like killifish and Fishkill, or… um, bookcase and casebook?
Thank you for finding this, Y! It’s very satisfying.
Seconded!
AG, I have no idea, but I bet that Pachaug is from the same Algonquian word as Patchogue on Long Island.
And perhaps related to Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, aka Lake Chabunagungamaug, aka Lake Webster.
Killifish is from the Dutch kil ‘creek’, as in Schuylkill or the Catskills
Calling a fish a ‘creek fish’ seems both unimaginative and highly unspecific
Wiktionary says that Dutch kil is either a creek in general, or more specifically “a waterway on sand flats or mud flats”. 17th-century NY Dutch might have had its own usages. What are the various kils in the Eastern US like? I live in faraway California.
The older orthography of Eastern Algonquian is a pain. I can’t tell if Trumbull copied all his sources correctly or not. Is “ü” the same as “ū”? What are all these vowel combinations?
Tough little guys:
This helps with the orthography. Maybe it’s something like /mahmitʲaːk/.
Around NYC the kills are tidal straits: the Kill van Kull on the northwestern shore of Staten Island that separates it from the Bayonne Peninsula. It means ‘creek of the pass’, the pass being the col (Fr > Du) in the ridge running down the peninsula. Close by is the Arthur Kill, which runs along the western edge of Staten Island and separates it from the mainland of New Jersey: this is < achterkil, ‘back channel’ distorted by folk etymology, though proper nativization would have made it Afterkill. There is also the Bronx Kill, now partly filled in, that provides recreational water and runs between the Bronx and Randalls Island, where NYC puts its public athletic fields, playgrounds (though there are many in more ordinary city parks), and picnicking grounds.
Further north the kills are streams that flow into the Hudson. Lastly there is Fresh Kills, NYC’s now-disused landfill; there are many freshwater streams in the area, so there is no actual implication that corpses were dumped there.
Preceded by Overkill, no doubt.
I bet that Pachaug is from the same Algonquian word as Patchogue on Long Island.
W. Tooker, The Indian Place-names on Long Island and Islands Adjacent: With Their Probable Significations, says:
In the summer of 1939, Albert Einstein was vacationing in Cutchogue. Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner drove out to look for him, ended up in Patchogue, then figured out their mistake, found Cutchogue, and eventually Einstein. They talked him into adding his signature on the letter to Roosevelt, urging him to start what would become the Manhattan Project.