Snakehead

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Shétóu is a Chinese word. Its literal meaning is "snake head." The Grand
>Dictionnaire Ricci de la Langue Chinoise says, "Tête du serpent ;
>serpent-tête : organisateur d'évasion clandestine ; passeur (on appelle les
>clandestins jen2 she2 [rénshé], hommes serpents, car ils voyageaient souvent
>au fond d'une cale serrés comme des serpents)." That is to say, snake head,
>organizer of clandestine escapes; people smuggler (the clandestine
>emigrants/immigrants used to be called snake people because they often
>traveled in a ship's hold cramped in like snakes. Google yields tens of
>thousands of Chinese pages for the Chinese binome shétóu (using the Chinese
>characters). I thought Ricci had it wrong and that it ought to be shérén,
>not rénshé. But the Hanyu Dacidian (in my opinion a greater lexicographic
>achievement than the OED, by the way) says that shérén was a snake seller.
>It does not list shétóu at all. Here's a webpage where you'll find shétóu
>used in Chinese.
>
>
>
>http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/overseas/2005-04/27/content_2885328.htm

Thanks. I found several others too. I was doing something wrong the first
time, I think, maybe wrong encoding.

But what is the relationship to the snakehead fish, if any? In some news
item (sorry I can't remember where) it was stated that the snakehead
[smuggler] was named after this fish.

Another item which comes to mind is the Chinese saying "a snake without a
head doesn't move" which means (I guess) "a group of people can't
accomplish anything without a leader" or so. This follows the number 2 near
the bottom of this page for example:

http://www.cccii.org.cn/zw22.htm

... extension of this metaphor would allow "snake head" to mean
"indispensable leader" ... or "person without which the group cannot move"
maybe. Just a coincidence?

-- Doug Wilson