Now the hammerfish is Sphyrna zygcena, the hammerhead shark, and on this point Gesner definitely says that the common codices or texts of his day were full of errors, zygcena being often written for sphyrama and vice versa. The hammerhead shark gets its name (sphyrna, ham zygcena, yoke) because the laterally elongated lobes of its head stand out from the body, giving the head end of the fish the shape of the Greek letter T. Further, Gesner says that at Marseilles there was a hammer-fish called Jew-fish, which by many was thought to be a sphy rcena but which was really a zygcena. Then he quotes the French ichthyologist Gilles, that the hammer-fish of Marseilles was a zygcena, and that it was called a Jew-fish because its lateral head projections much resembled a kind of head-dress having lateral horns formerly worn by certain Jews of that city. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the specific name given to the hammerhead shark by many ichthyologists is or was malleus (hammer). From all this we may easily see how the names were confused.
However, this etymological tangle is not so easily unraveled as the preceding paragraph seems to show. Sphyrcena probably has its origin in the word sphyra, which means hammer. Gaza gives as a synonym the Latin word malleolus, and this has added further to the complexity. The word malleolus means a little hammer, and Professor Miller writes me that it is neo-Latin for the tibia and fibula with their enlarged ends. These in Greek are represented by the word sphyron, which also means hammer. And so it seems that we have come to a cul de sac. Now let us return to cestra and see what we can get from it.
Pollex (born at Naucrates, Egypt, about 130 A. D.) has left us a dictionary of Greek words in which "cestra" is defined as "a certain kind of hammer"; but what kind? Professor Gildersleeve writes that it was "an agricultural implement employed in breaking up clods." And Professor Miller says that it was a double-headed hammer, flat on one head and with the other pointed, a pick hammer or " Spitz hammer," such as geologists use. Such hammers are figured among the illustrations in archeological works. Now the error of preceding writers is clear. Deriving sphyrcena from sphyra, hammer, and either overlooking cestra in its meaning of javelin, or using cestra as hammer without going into critical study of what kind of hammer, they have in all cases made Sphyrcsna the hammerfish, when it should be the pick hammer fish, the name being given not in allusion to the hammer end of the tool but to the pick end. Hence Sphyrcena is not the hammer fish but the pickhammer fish, and it is seen that the name plainly alludes to the shape of the head and snout, and that it is a synonym for cestra and for midis.
On the origin of the specific name, barracuda, I regret that I am unable to throw any light. Walbaum in 1792 seems to have first used
it for the name of the species. So struck was he with the similarity of this fish to the fresh-water pike, that he named it Esox barracuda. He, however, simply gave his so-called "pike" the native name barra cuda with which Catesby had labeled his drawing from a Bahama specimen in 1731.
The use of the name, however, antedates Catesby. Sloane (n. 1725) uses it. Dampier, whose sixth edition (published 1729) I have, refers to this fish under the name "Parricoota." Dampier's second visit to Campeachy, where he first saw or at any rate described the "Parricoota," was made in 1676. In book n, chapter 2 (p. 144), in which the fish is referred to, Dampier says that "About the middle of February 75-6, we sailed from Jamaica" for Campeachy and after a short and safe voyage arrived there. Dampier's Voyages are written directly from his manuscript journal, and the accounts on pages 171-2 of his printed book are dated 1676, so at least to this date the name Parricoota, a corruption of the apparently native word barracuda, can be traced. Probably a close search of the early Spanish chroniclers and writers on the natural history of the West Indies would show the name in use long before Dampier's time.
This name, in its various spellings (barracuda, barracouta, barra cuta, parricoota, paracuta, etc.), has become wide-spread, being the common name for the fish wherever found the world around.
The other colloquial name, gouda, seems to have been given the fish by Parra in 1787. This is a Spanish term, having its root in com mon with our English word pike, given in plain allusion to the simi larity in form and habits between this fish and the fresh-water pike.
The name becune is French in origin, and it will be recalled as the name used by Rochefort, De Tertre, Labat, and Fermin. This is the Gallicized form of the medieval Latin word becuna according to the Century and Standard Dictionaries. However, not being content with this, I asked Professor Miller to pass on these names also, and he kindly writes that beeline is French and is borrowed from the Spanish becuna. He notes that the first syllable of these words corresponds to the French word bec, beak of a bird or snout of a fish, and that the Latin word beccus is of Gallic origin. The -une or -una is simply a termination. Hence becune or becuna means beak-fish.
In this connection, Professor Miller makes the interesting sugges tion that, since sphyra conveys no suggestion of sharpness or pointed ness, as does the word cestra, possibly the name may have been given in allusion to the hammer-like swiftness and force of the fish's attack. Then he adds: "The sphyrcena would then be hammer-fish; the cestra, the pickhammer-fish; the sudi8, the stake fish; the becuna (becune), the beak-fish: according to the varying point of view of the observer."