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Harbor Porpoises

National Geographic

As a former Latin teacher, I’m always interested in the evolution of the English language. Civilizations that we consider to be ancient (or at least unbelievably old) still shape the words and phrases that we use every day. Those ancient people developed some pretty interesting ways of communicating what they were seeing and how they were experiencing the world around them. I’m always struck by the way that cultures from around the world have influenced our modern English language – and the animal kingdom is a great place to see language in action.

One of my favorite fun language tidbits is how often the Greeks, Romans, and a number of subsequent Romance languages, defaulted to pigs when naming other animals. Take, for example, porcupines: porcus from the Roman for “pig” and spinae meaning “spines”. I love how literal translations like this are, and every time I see a porcupine I always laugh that the Romans essentially named this animal a “spine pig”. The least fair of the ancient pig-naming spree must be porpoises. The name porpoise is derived from the Latin porcopiscus, which is a combination of porcus (meaning pig) and piscus (meaning fish). Poor porpoises…or should I say pig fish?

W. Brooks Paternotte took the helm of Irvine Nature Center as executive director in July 2013 and immediately began building on the strong 35-year foundation. Brooks is a Baltimore native who was a teacher, coach, advisor, dean and Head of the Middle School during his 13 years at Boys’ Latin School in Baltimore. He is also an instructor and ambassador of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and is a Leave No Trace Master, as well as an avid outdoorsman and a features writer for FlyLife Magazine.