ABSTRACT
According to Huxley (1880), the origin of the common name, “crayfi sh” involves some interesting questions of etymology, and indeed, of history. It might readily be supposed that the word “cray” had a meaning of its own, and qualifi ed with the substantive “fi sh”, but this is not certain. The old English method of writing the word was “crevis” or “crevice”, and “cray” was simply a phonetic spelling, with the word “fi sh” added to reinforce our perception of it as an aquatic animal. The term “crevis” has two distinct meanings. Swahn (2004) suggests that, according to the French, that the English were the fi rst Astacus eaters (there is a historical reference to people eating crayfi sh in England from the tenth century onwards), and as in many other cases, they accepted not only the food but also the old French name for it. The French word “(é)crevisse” was modifi ed and the new word “cray-fi sh” created. In the United States, crayfi sh are commonly known as crawfi sh, crawdads, or mudbugs and constitute a diverse and important component of freshwater aquatic and semi-aquatic ecosystems around the world (Taylor and Schuster 2004). The etymology of these terms is less clear.
