![\"\"](\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/goldensmell.jpg\" "\\"Click")
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/milkfish.jpg\" "\\"Click")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe operative readings on the respective packages are:<\/p>\n
j\u012bnzh\u012bw\u00e8i \u91d1\u4e4b\u5473 (\"golden taste\")<\/p>\n
sh\u012bm\u00f9y\u00faw\u00e1n \u8671\u76ee\u9c7c\u4e38<\/span> (lit., \"louse \/ cootie eye fish ball\")<\/p>\n The glitch with the first translation is due to the wrong choice among the various meanings of w\u00e8i \u5473 (\"flavor; taste; smell; odor\").<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there's not much you can do with sh\u012bm\u00f9y\u00fa \u8671 \u76ee\u9c7c<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0because it really is the \"Chinese\" name for the milkfish (Chanos chanos<\/i><\/a>).\u00a0I'm unaware of other English names for this fish, and the Japanese seem just to call it sabah\u012b \u30b5\u30d0\u30d2\u30fc (I'm waiting on Japanese ichthyologists and lexicographers to explain the full derivation of that term, though it seems to me to be simply a katakana transcription of the Taiwanese name on the package), but it would appear that not everybody in China thinks its eyes look like those of a cootie<\/a> \/ louse<\/a>,\u00a0since there are so many other radically different names that it goes by in \"Chinese\":<\/p>\n (translations are literal)<\/p>\n h\u01ceic\u01ceo y\u00fa \u6d77\u8349\u9b5a (\"seaweed fish\")<\/p>\n \u0101np\u00edng y\u00fa \u5b89\u5e73\u9b5a (\"peace fish\" — though this might be a place name)<\/p>\n gu\u00f3x\u00ecng y\u00fa \u570b\u59d3\u9b5a (\"national surname fish\")<\/p>\n m\u00e1sh\u012b m\u00f9 \u9ebb\u8671\u76ee (\"hemp louse eye\") — this is a Taiwanese word, so it should be pronounced mu\u00e2-sat-ba\u030dk<\/p>\n m\u00e1sh\u012b m\u00f9 z\u01d0 \u9ebb\u8671\u76ee\u4ed4 (\"hemp louse eye diminutive suffix \") — this is also a Taiwanese word, so it should be pronounced mu\u00e2-sat-ba\u030dk-\u00e1<\/p>\n zh\u0113m\u00f9 y\u00fa \u906e\u76ee\u9b5a (\"covered eye fish\")<\/p>\n zhu\u00e0ngyu\u00e1n y\u00fa \u72c0\u5143\u9b5a (\"champion fish\") — I've been told that this is a new term coined on the Mainland to make the fish sound more appealing for marketing purposes, since \"cootie eye fish\" is not very attractive to people who don't speak Taiwanese.<\/p>\n ni\u00fan\u01cei y\u00fa \u725b\u5976\u9b5a (\"milkfish\" — translation from the English)<\/p>\n Aside from the two Taiwanese names, which I did catch, some of the others may also be topolectal, thus Mandarin would not be the best pronunciation for them, and they may have local or regional nuances that I am unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n In Taiwanese, the usual word for this fish is sat-ba\u030dk-h\u00ee<\/a> \/ sat-ba\u030dk-h\u00fb.\u00a0Some Taiwanese scholars hold that since the milkfish is called sabalote in Spanish (it is also called pez-de-leche), it may have been transcribed this way during the colonial period.\u00a0 There are other theories concerning the origin of the Taiwanese name, including that it comes from a substrate Siraya word, particularly when it has the prefix mu\u00e2 \u9ebb, which I don't think really means \"hemp\", but is being used for transcriptional purposes.<\/p>\n N.B. The MSM term for \"louse; cootie\" is sh\u012b \u8671 (common variant \u8768) or <\/span>sh\u012bzi <\/span>\u8671\u5b50 (with noun suffix added).<\/span>\u00a0 Half a dozen additional variants for \u8671 may be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is as far as I got in my own researches last night, but when I woke up this morning, I found the following wonderful notes from Michael Cannings:<\/p>\n Milkfish appears to have been farmed in southwestern Taiwan since at least the days of Zheng<\/a>\u00a0rule (1662\u20131683).<\/span><\/p>\n The online Catalog of Life in Taiwan contains the following theories on the origins of the name:<\/span><\/p>\n \u800c \u6709\u95dc\u65bc\u6b64\u9b5a\u8af8\u591a\u9b5a\u540d\u7684\u7531\u4f86\uff0c\u6d41\u50b3\u751a\u591a\uff0c So in summary we have four proposals:<\/span><\/p>\n If I had to put money on one of the four, I'd go with number one: aboriginal loan. Unfortunately I don't have access to a Siraya dictionary, which might otherwise help to add weight to that hunch.<\/span><\/p>\n Milkfish is one of those animals with lots of different names in Taiwanese. A lot of local flora and fauna doesn't have standardised names, and names can overlap with completely different species.<\/span><\/p>\n My dictionary lists seven:<\/span><\/p>\n Add in Lian Heng's \u9ebb\u85a9\u672b\u00a0m\u00f4a-sat-boa\u030dt<\/i> to make eight – with 4 and 5 above collectively they add weight to the phonetic loan theory. In which case the \u9ebb\u8671 of your question doesn't \"mean\" anything.<\/span><\/p>\n Online searches reveal a few more names, including \u906e\u76ee\u9b5a (\"covered eye fish\"), \u570b\u59d3\u9b5a (\"national surname fish\"), \u6bba\u76ee\u9b5a (\"kill eye fish\"), and \u585e\u76ee\u9b5a (\"stuffed eye fish\"). (VHM:\u00a0 tentative, literal translations provided by me.) The most common nowadays is, I think, sat-ba\u030dk-h\u00ee \u8671\u76ee\u9b5a. This could be a contraction of the original\u00a0m\u00f4a-sat-ba\u030dk, with h\u00ee (\"fish\") added as an identifier.<\/span><\/p>\n The\u00a0\u4ed4 suffix is pronounced \u00e1, and is a dialect variation. This is true of many animal names in Taiwan – some topolects prefer to add \u00e1, others prefer not to.<\/span><\/p>\n There's not much more that needs to be said after all that, except:<\/p>\n\n
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