chub

[Victor Steinbok]

Please forgive the long post.

There are several OED entries for "chub".

> 1. a. A river fish (/Cyprinus/ or /Leuciscus cephalus/) of the Carp
> family (/Cyprinidæ/), also called the Chevin. It is a thick fat
> coarse-fleshed fish, of a dusky green colour on the upperparts and
> silvery-white beneath, frequenting deep holes, especially about the
> roots of trees, and in warm weather rising near the surface.
> b. /U.S./ A local name for the Black Bass (/Perca huro/). Also 'a name
> sometimes given to the Blackfish (/Tautoga americana/)'. (Bartlett.)
> 2. a. /transf./ A lazy spiritless person; a rustic, simpleton, dolt,
> fool; also, playfully, lad, 'fellow', 'chap'. /Obs/.
> Etc./
> /

The first thought that comes to mind is, are 1. and 2. really connected?
(3. and 4. seems to be close to 2.) If not, why are they not listed as
separate articles? However, I am mostly concerned about the fish.

Walk into any deli in the US--even many supermarket delis--and you will
find "smoked whitefish chubs" on the menu. The "chubs" are herring-like
small fish that have been hot-smoked and acquired the characteristic
light bronze color of all smoked fish. They don't fit any of the
definitions above. In fact, I've often wondered if the "chub"
designation refers to the fact that they are sold as whole fish. There
are large smoked whitefish as well and they belong to a different
species--but I've never seen them referred to as "chubs". Most
importantly, it has a plural--"chub" refers to a single fish, "chubs" to
a collection. The same cannot be said about either 1.a. or 1.b.

Looking up "whitefish" doesn't help, as only one definition is even
remotely related.

> 3. A common name for the fishes of the genus /Coregonus/, of the
> family /Salmonidæ/, found in the lakes of North America, and valued as
> food.

As a sidenote, compare this definition with the taste note Thoreau gave
on chubs (immediately following below)--combining the two, we get
whitefish chubs that are "valued as food and taste like boiled brown
paper salted". Not quite what I had in mind...

Second, the 1.b. entry has three examples:

> 1862 H. D. Thoreau /Atlantic Monthly/ Aug. 248/2   The chub is a soft
> fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted.
> 1883 /Cent. Mag./ July 376/1   There are but two species of black
> bass..the large-mouthed bass and the small-mouthed bass..known in
> different sections of our country [U.S.] as bass, perch, trout, chub
> or salmon.
> 1884 /Cent. Mag./ Apr. 908/1   A black bass..becomes a 'chub' in Virginia.

OK, the first one refers to "chub" but does not actually identify it, so
there is little opportunity to find out if it is actually related to the
other two. The third claims that Virginia regional name for "black bass"
is "chub"--maybe it is, maybe it isn't (or maybe it once was). But the
middle one is just absurd. Bass, trout, perch and salmon simply do not
belong to the same species--no matter how you slice it. And they did not
belong to the same species in 1883 either, which makes me suspect that
the 1884 identification is just as (in)accurate. Seriously--trout and
salmon may be distant relations, but they are not the same species. In
fact, there are at least three distinct genera that include fish labeled
as "trout". Per Wiki:

# Oncorhynchus - Pacific salmon and trout (14 species)
# Salmo - Atlantic salmon and trout (29 species)
# Salvelinus - Char and trout (e.g. Brook trout, Lake trout) (49 species)

None of these go by "chub"--and I find no persuasive evidence that they
ever did. And Bass and perch are from completely different families,
although it's easy to see how someone might refer to a smallmouth bass
as a "perch". The reality is that only the black bass has been
mistakenly identified by all these other names, but the fish that are
normally identified as trout, salmon, etc., rarely, if ever, cross over
(with the exception, in fact, of trout and salmon!). So the problem is
that /regionally/ black bass used to be referred to by these names, but
the regions were non-overlapping.

I tracked down the 1883 article and got the full excerpt:

> "There are but two well-defined species, the large-mouthed bass and
> the small-mouthed bass," continued the Professor, settling himself for
> a lecture. "There has been more confusion and uncertainty attending
> the scientific classification and nomenclature of the black bass than
> usually falls to the lot of fishes, some dozen generic appellations
> and nearly fifty specific titles having been bestowed upon the two
> species by naturalists since their first scientific descriptions by
> Count Lacepede in 1802. Nor has this polyonomous feature been confined
> to their scientific terminology, for thenvernacular names have been as
> numerous and varied; thus they are known in different sections of our
> country as bass, perch, trout, chub, or salmon, with or without
> various qualifying adjectives descriptive of color or habits."
> "Yes," assented Ignatius, "I have heard them called black perch,
> yellow perch, and jumping perch up the Rockcastle and Cumberland
> nvers, and white and black trout in Tennessee."
> "Exactly," returned the Professor. "Much of the confusion attending
> the common names of the black bass arises from the coloration of the
> species, which varies greatly, even in the same waters; thus they are
> known as black, green, yellow, and spotted bass. Then they have
> received names somewhat descriptive of their habitat, as, lake, river,
> marsh, pond, slough, bayou, moss, grass, and Oswego bass. Other names
> have been conferred on account of their pugnacity or voracity, as,
> tiger, bull, sow, and buck bass. In the Southern States they are
> universally known as 'trout.' In portions of Virginia they are called
> chub, southern chub, or Roanoke chub. In North and South Carolina they
> are variously known as trout, trout-perch, or Welshman; indeed, the
> largemouthed bass received its first scientific, specific name from a
> drawing and description of a Carolina bass sent to Lacepede under the
> local name of trout, or trout-perch, who accordingly named it
> /salmoides, /meaning trout-like, or salmon-like."
> "How do you account for the ridiculous practice of applying such names
> as trout and salmon to a spiny-finned fish of the order of perches ?"
> asked Ignatius.
> "They were first given, I think, by the early English settlers of
> Virginia and the Carolinas, who, finding the bass a game fish of high
> degree, naturally gave it the names of those game fishes parexcellence
> of England, whert they found that neither the salmon nor the trout
> inhabited southern waters. In the same way the misnomers of quail,
> partridge, pheasant, and rabbit have been applied, there being no true
> species of any of these indigenous to America."

The piece is called "Black Bass Fishing" and is signed "James A.
Henshall". The date and page number in the OED citation are indeed
correct, but the entire piece appears in the second column, not first,
so it should be 376/2, not 376/1. In any case, despite this small
correction, correcting the reference was not my goal. Rather, I would
like to see the entire subentry dismissed or modified.

As is clear from the article (and from several others), the name "chub"
was only used for Black Bass in Southern Virginia--and very likely is no
longer used as such. If we follow this standard, we would have to
identify over 40 different species or even genera of fish that go by the
name "chub", with only some of them belonging to the Carp family, as
chub 1.a. tells us (Wiki identifies 2 individual species and 2 genera
that go by "chub", in addition to a list of 15 genera in the Cyprinidae
family). This is absurd. It is pointless to identify every single
species of fish that's ever been identified as "chub", regionally or
globally. Furthermore, the lemma identifies Black Bass species
incorrectly. I have no idea where the OED name came from, but even in
1883 largemouth bass was identified as Micropterus salmoides and
smallmouth as Micropterus dolomieu. This designation has been unchanged
for over 100 years. There are two other species that are designated as
belonging to the Black Bass genus, but they are not relevant here at
all. The point is that none of them are /ever/ identified as "Perca
huro". Perca huro is Yellow Perch from Lake Huron--utterly unrelated to
Black Bass--and even that name is a misnomer, as "huro" refers to
subspecies of several perch species that live in the lake (primarily
Perca flavescens). At one point, largemouth bass was classified as
/genus/ Huro, but that was Huro salmoides, and it was only a brief
flirtation before the entire Micropterus genus was reunited. I have no
idea where "Perca huro" might have come from other than utter confusion
on the part of the responsible editor.

The Tautoga reference is more interesting. Wiki identifies only one
species of Tautog and that article has a useful quotation:

> Barlett (1848) wrote "[Tautaug] is an Indian word, and may be found in
> Roger Williams' /Key to the Indian Language/." The name is from the
> Narragansett language, originally /tautauog/ (pl. of /taut/). It is
> also called a "black porgy" (/cf./ Japanese black porgy), "chub"
> (/cf./ the freshwater chub) , "oyster-fish" (in North Carolina) or
> "blackfish"(in New York/New Jersey, New England).

Here we get the "freshwater chub". But if this is the same Bartlett,
where is the 1848 reference in the OED?? All I see is three articles in
US periodicals that are ridiculing the notion that black bass is in any
way a "chub". In fact, why is "chub" getting this treatment, while
"trout" and "salmon" are not? Trout handles it slightly better:

> 1. a. A well-known freshwater fish of the genus /Salmo/, esp. /S.
> fario/, the common trout, inhabiting most rivers and lakes of the
> temperate or colder parts of the northern hemisphere; it is
> distinguished by numerous spots of red and black on its sides and
> head, and is greatly valued as a sporting fish and on account of its
> edible quality.
> 2. Used as a name of various fish (chiefly /Salmonidæ/) resembling the
> trout in appearance or habits. Now /local/.
> 3. With defining prefix, as the name of various species of the genus
> /Salmo/ (or of the allied genus /Salvelinus/), and occasionally of
> other genera.

This is better but still underwhelming. For one, OED lists rainbow trout
as S. irideus, but Wiki has it as Oncorhynchus mykiss--linking it
directly with Pacific salmon. Both are questionable--the latter is
better known as "steelhead trout" is the relationship with salmon is
obvious because of the color of the flesh. What one finds in an American
supermarket labeled as "rainbow trout" is actually brown trout from the
genus Salmo--"rainbow" sounds so much better than "brown", doesn't it?
(And, no, brown trout is not S. fario, but S. trutta.)

In any case, 2. is the dominant definition here. The family that
includes most trout--/including Salmo/--is Salmonidae. That's the top
link in the taxonomy. OED is mum on this. But even then, there is
nothing wrong with this definition, right?

Look again at the 1883 account:

> "How do you account for the ridiculous practice of applying such names
> as trout and salmon to a spiny-finned fish of the order of perches ?"
> asked Ignatius.
> "They were first given, I think, by the early English settlers of
> Virginia and the Carolinas, who, finding the bass a game fish of high
> degree, naturally gave it the names of those game fishes parexcellence
> of England, whert they found that neither the salmon nor the trout
> inhabited southern waters.

If the dictionary is going to include a minor regional use of "chub" it
should certainly include a broader regional use of "trout", right? And
if it does not include one for some pragmatic reason, it should exclude
the other /for the same reason/! Take your pick, I don't really care
which way it goes. But correct the taxonomic nomenclature.

Salmon is actually done much better.

> 1. a. A large fish belonging to the genus /Salmo/, family /Salmonidæ/,
> esp. /Salmo salar/, comprising the largest fish of this family, which
> when mature are characterized by having red flesh, and a silvery skin
> marked with large black and red spots; highly prized as an article of
> food.
> b. Applied to fishes belonging to other genera of the same family;
> esp., a fish of any of the species of the genus /Oncorhynchus/, called
> the Pacific salmon.
> c. Applied to fishes resembling a salmon, but not belonging to the
> /Salmonidæ/. /(a) /In U.S., the squeteague n.; also the /pike-perch/
> (see pike n.4 2). /(b) /In Australia and New Zealand, /Arripis salar/.

The fun part here is that the Salmo genus has also been listed as trout,
making "large fish" from Salmo both trout and salmon. Ironically, this
is actually true for steelhead trout that is colloquially referred to as
"salmon" because of the color of its flesh, but, from 2008, can no
longer be referred to as "salmon" commercially. The same applies to
"char", which is neither salmon nor trout, but belongs to one of the
same genera that contain other fish that are identifies as either salmon
or trout or both. But the Salmon entry is handled much better than
either the trout or the chub entry--among other reasons because it does
not contain the lame reference to Black Bass. If I were to draw a Venn
diagram for the salmon definitions, it would actually make sense,
whereas the other two would not. And if you really want to scream, look
up "forelle" in the OED online.

In any case, all of this is somewhat convoluted and perhaps /ultimately/
important, but it doesn't have the same immediate impact as the absence
of /any/ definition that can resolve "smoked whitefish chubs".

     VS-)

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