Fish Names

Posted by Tad McIlwraith on August 4th, 2005 filed in Fish / Fishing, Linguistic Anthropology, Research Strategies, Traditional Knowledge

LanguageHat.com comments on a fascinating database of fish names called FishBase. FishBase includes numerous search engines and research tools related to the classification of fish and it catalogues fish on a global scale.

The FishBase managers provide a useful description of the value of this resource to studies in linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and ethnotaxonomy.

I have been fascinated Athapaskan fish names for some time and spent many sessions with elders discussing variations in fish names in the Tahltan language. Such talk revealed, among other things, a wide variety of fish names for what Linnaeus would consider the same fish within a very small community. I’m pleased to have this resource at hand.

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