Eggcorn Forum

An astounding variety of spellings for “calamari.” The middle “a” can be “i” or “e,” the final “i” can be “y.” And that’s just the vowels. I note also that the “l” can be “r,” the “r” an “l,” the “c” a “k.” In other words, {c|k}a{l|r}{a|e|i}ma{r|l}{i|y}. Either people who eat squid can’t spell, or people who can’t spell eat squid.

Speakers of Romance Languages would be most susceptible to the “cala-mari” confusion, I suppose, since they usually retain some cognate of the Latin word “mare” to refer to the sea. For myself, I don’t believe I made the “sea” association when I first heard “calamari.”

“Cala-mari” sounds a little bit polynesian, doesn’t it? Analogous to “mahi-mahi.”

Hi, Pat! I’m not sure that “calamarium,” “pen case,” refers to the squid’s ink, but rather to its “pen,” which is the common English name for the cuttlebone, or internal shell of the squid: “The squid has only a remnant of the molluscan shell, called the squid pen, that is used for reinforcement of the expanded and heavily muscled mantle cavity.” What I don’t know is whether this was called a “pen” in Latin. Any Latinists out there?

David

You can count me among those who associated the “mari” part with the sea.

The zoological term for the squid’s pen is a gladius, “sword”, so that doesn’t help much. I did find this early reference to meaning of the calamari.

Voyci ce qu’en dit Rondelet au 4.chapitre du 17. liure: Le Loligo magna des Latins, appellé Teuthos des Grecs, est ce poisson que nous appellons Calemar, pource qu’il ressemble unec escritoire. Ceux de Bayonne le nomment Cornet & le petit Loligo Corniches. Aussi a ce poisson la forme d’un cornet au gros bout d’un petit cousteau, qui par les deux autres bouts ressemble le caniuet & la plume, & est fourni d’ancre au dedás comme la Seiche.
Commentaires et annotations sur la sepmaine de la Création du Monde
By Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas

My translation:

Here’s what Rondelet has to say about this, from Ch. 4 of the 17th book: The Loligo magna of the Latins, called Teuthos by the Greeks, is the fish that we call Calemar, because it resembles a pen. In Bayonne it’s called the Cone, & the small Loligo is called a Corniche. This fish has the form of a cone (small horn) at the big end of a little knife, that by the two other ends resembles the tube and the feather, and is supplied with ink internally, like the cuttlefish.
From Commentaries and annotations on “The Week of the Creation of the World”, by Simon Goulart, 1581.

Seigneur du Bartas published his poem of theology and natural history in 1578, when those two fields were the same thing. The Guillaume Rondelet of this commentary was a famous ichthyologist of the mid-16th C. Admittedly, it’s difficult from the description provided to picture the squid’s form, but there is clear reference to his understanding of the origin of the name in the resemblance of the form of the whole animal to a writing instrument. We connect the pen-name to the shape of the internal skeleton. I don’t know whether it was Rondelet had it wrong, or whether the image connection to the skeleton came later. The resemblance of the squid’s gladius to a quill pen is evident in this image:

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Note the use of the term “caniuet” for the ‘tube’ of the animal, referring to the business end of a quill pen (the tentacles at the other end correspond with the barbs of the feather). This is presumably a cognate of the “canut” of the Catalans. A common toast in the bar in Barcelona is “Salud i força al canut”, or “Your health, and strength to the tube”. There is a play on words here – the Catalonian purse in days of yore had the shape of a tube. Otherwise, the double entendre echoes fishbait’s remarks about the calamus. Similar connections can be made to that other pen. I mean the penne of Italy, arabbiata or otherwise.

Last edited by David Bird (2011-12-29 20:58:02)

You’re right, Pat, I should have acknowledged the ambiguity in “escritoire” which I arbitrarily translated as a pen. I’ve come around completely to the idea that the squid was pictured as a kind of pen case. This dictionary from 1882 agrees with you that a calamarium was an _étui_, “case, sheath, box” where quills or reeds and ink were stored. So each of the arms would represent a quill, I guess. This is still not completely clear. The beast seems to have at least three ends in this description.