July 27, 2009

The city of Split is in the Dalmatia region of Croatia, which is apparently where dalmations originally come from. In fact, the islands dotting the waters off the coast of Croatia look a little bit like a dalmation’s spots. Could there be a connection there? Unlikely at best, you say, and you would be right. In any case, Split is Croatia’s largest coastal city, and it is very beautiful – its red roofs and aqua ocean contrast the greyish greenish hills that surround it. It has a lively atmosphere of waterside cafes, bars, and restaurants, as well as constant ferry and ship traffic, and impressive Roman ruins in its ancient town centre. Being next to the ocean means that seafood is the cuisine of choice, and there are indeed plenty of restaurants cooking up excellent seafood to choose from. This mention of seafood, however, brings me conveniently to what I really wanted to write about in this blog post: fish names.

I came across two awesome fish names while travelling. The first was the brilliantly descriptive Stoplight Loosejaws, which was printed in an Italian aquarium. Originally I put it down to creative translation from Italian, but I have since looked around online and found that in fact there is a whole family of these slack jawed fish, that they are found worldwide, and that they have one of the widest gapes of any fish. So I take back my initial scepticism of the name’s validity, but not my glee at the name itself.

The second great fish name was discovered in Split itself, and that is why these fish name stories are at all relevant to the photos in this blog post. At a restaurant, my travelling companions and I were given menus in both Croatian and English, and in the English menu we found the tantalising “Fried Smoothhound”. Further bemused investigation revealed that smoothhound had been translated from the Croation word for shark. As we all know, sharks are the smoothest of all fish, so it made sense. I have since searched Wikipedia – that font of facts and ruiner of whimsy – and discovered that not only is there an actual genus of sharks which are called the smooth-hounds, but there are at least 25 different kinds of said sea dogs. I must admit to being slightly disappointed that these names were not, as I originally thought, funny mistranslations, but rather scientifically correct. Never mind – I’m sure I’m only scraping the surface of funny fish names in the world. Do let me know if you’ve come across others.