REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 169 
life in a new land. One such is alewife (omolobus pseudoharengus), 
so familiar in connection with the enormous schools of the clupeid so 
called, which enter the rivers of New England. So entirely has the 
name been submerged in England, so prominent has it become in the 
United States, that it has been supposed by some lexicographers to be 
of American origin. For example, in that monument of industry and 
erudition, ‘‘A New Dictionary on Historical Principles [ete.], edited 
by James A. H. Murray, [LL. D., etc.], with the assistance of many 
scholars and men of science,” the etymology of alewife is given in 
the following terms: ‘‘ Corrupted from 17th ¢. a/oofe, taken by some 
to be an American Indian name; according to others a literal error 
for French a/ose, a shad. Further investigation is required.” (It is 
defined ‘* An American fish | Clupea serrata] closely allied to the her- 
ring.”) Further investigation has demonstrated that the supposed 
etymology is based on errors of several kinds. Too much space would 
be required to give the details, and those especially interested may 
find the record (by the present writer) in that receptacle of notes 
curious and philological entitled, ‘t‘ Notes and Queries” (9th s., VIII, 
451-452). In brief, the status is this: 
(1) Alewife is not only an old English name, but still survives in 
southwestern England, asattest the works of Couch and Day on English 
fishes. (2) Alose, as such or with literal modifications, has existed as 
an English word, in certain localities, for centuries, although it was 
doubtless derived from the French through the Normans. In 1620, 
the same year that the Pilgrim Fathers left old Eugland and reached 
New England, one Venner published the statement that ‘* The a//owes 
is taken in the same places that sammon is.” (3) A/oofe is simply the 
result of a printer’s mistaking an old-fashioned median s foran f. The 
second John Winthrop sent to the Royal Society an article on ‘* maiz,” 
which was published in 1679 in the Philosophical Transactions (XII, 
p. 1066). In that article he noted the coincidence of the planting of 
corn by the Indians and the ‘‘coming up of a fish, called a/oofe, into 
the rivers.” Of course that fish could only have been the one called 
by his contemporaries, Morton, Wood, and Josselyn, adlize and alewife. 
(4) Alewife is doubtless a mere variant—an accommodative form, per- 
haps—of.the word variously spelled in olden days a/ose, aloose (the oo 
has the value of a prolonged 0 sound), allowes, allow, alice, olafle, and 
oldwife. (5) The Narragansett Indian name of the alewife was (in the 
plural) awnsuog, according to Roger Williams, or wnpsauges, accord- 
ing to Stiles.’ (6) The current English name of one of the shads is 
allice or allis shad. 
aThe reference in the English Dictionary is to 1678 (date of presentation of paper), and page 1017. 
bJ. H. Trumbull, in his Natick Dictionary (1903), refers from awm-st-og to Ommis; ‘“ émmis, pl. + 
suog, herring, C. [=Cotton] 159.’’ The word is believed to be ‘dim. of aumsuog”’ and not properly 
Natick. 
