I’ve stated over the years that I’m something of a dilettante. Among the interests in which I dabble you’ll find the fascinating field of etymology. Words are fun. History is interesting. Therefore, the history of words is an endless joy… to me, anyway. A case in point:

Kyla and The Roomie and I were in the kitchen yesterday morning, eating and fixing breakfast respectively, and my eye chanced upon the cat food bag on a nearby windowsill. One of the featured fish caught my eye: Albacore tuna. For some reason I thought next about the albatross (and refrained from quoting Monty Python, I’ll have you know), at which point I mused aloud about the similarity in naming. “What does the ‘alba’ prefix mean?” I knew that it was going to bother me until I found out.

Late last night I indulged in a few minutes’ research. Turns out that one of the sources of ‘alba-‘ is our old dead friend Latin, “albus” for white. Albacore? The “only tuna species which may be marketed as ‘white meat tuna’ in the United States.” Albatross? A mostly-white seagoing bird. (Granted, the etymology is a bit mixed here, being a weird morphing from an Arabic origin having to do with being a “diving bird” to a Latin-influenced final product.)

Thus educated, I could sleep peacefully.