Talk:salmo

Greetings. I'm curious about the etymology of salmon. It says here it's from salmo, psalm. Any idea why this is? My impression was that it might be from a Celtic legend about the salmon of knowledge - http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandsstories/finnmaccoolandthesalmonofknowledge/salmonofknowledge/index.asp - and perhaps under the influence of this legend, the lax was renamed the Solomon-fish. The four consonants shared between salmon and Solomon are a great coincidence, if a coincidence they are. And why would a fish be named psalm? Thanks. Toanke (talk) 19:09, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

There's no etymology of salmon on this page. This is salmo, with no n. The Spanish and Italian both have other words for salmon: Spanish salmón and Italian salmone. Those, and English salmon, are ultimately from Latin salmo, which is inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Spanish and Italian salmo are from Latin psalmus, which is, in turn, from Ancient Greek ψαλμός (psalmós, “song accompanied by a harp”) from Ancient Greek (deprecated template usage) ψάλλω (psallō). The Scots would no doubt have originally used Scottish Gaelic bradan, not the Latin salmo. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:01, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

As far as Solomon, that's from the Latin spelling of the Greek spelling of Biblical Hebrew שְׁלֹמֹה (Shlomo), from שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace”). There's absolutely no connection between Solomon and salmon, except how they ended up being spelled similarly in Latin. Lots of coincidences, but none of the things you're connecting are really connected. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)