Why is the killer whale also called "épaulard"?

In French, the killer whale has two names. “Orque”, a learned word that came down from Latin by way of the naturalists of the 18^th century. And “épaulard”, a popular word that the sailors of the French Atlantic coast used for centuries, which still appears in the dictionaries and can still be heard in some ports. Where do these two words come from? Why this duality? The etymology of these names takes us travelling through history, Roman antiquity, Old French, the merchant marine, risky translations, and reveals along the way the contradictory fascination this animal has inspired, swinging between the deity of the underworld and the cutting blade.

The origin of “épaulard”

The word appears in French as early as the 16^th century in a range of forms: espaulard, espalard, espaard, épallard. It denotes a large cetacean observed in the Atlantic, identified by its tall, straight dorsal fin. Several etymological hypotheses have been put forward.

The hypothesis most widely accepted today among French linguists, supported in particular by the Trésor de la langue française and by the standard etymological dictionaries, is that of the sword blade. The dorsal fin of the adult male can reach 1.80 metres in height, straight and triangular, and emerges spectacularly from the surface as the animal swims. That shape calls to mind a blade, or a sword planted vertically in the water. The word would then derive from espée (sword in Old French), with a diminutive suffix.

An alternative hypothesis, less well documented, proposes a link with épaule, the French for shoulder (on account of the animal’s robust build, which suggests a “broad-shouldered” outline). That reading is less favoured by linguists, who note that the blade metaphor is consistent with other contemporary names in other maritime languages: older English spoke of the sword fish whale, Dutch of zwaardvis-walvis (sword-fish-whale).

Along the French Atlantic seaboard, the word “épaulard” was in common use until the early 20^th century among sailors, fishermen and chroniclers. It was gradually replaced in the press and in literature by the more learned “orque”, without disappearing altogether. In some Breton and Norman ports, older people can still be heard speaking of “épaulards”.

The origin of “orque”

The other name, “orque”, comes from the Latin orca, which in Roman antiquity already referred to frightening cetaceans observed in the Mediterranean. The word appears in Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (book IX), written in the 1^st century AD. Pliny describes the orcae as fierce predators capable of attacking the whales themselves, an observation probably based on the cooperative hunts of Mediterranean killer whales against rorquals.

The Latin etymology probably goes back to Orcus, the Roman deity of the underworld and of death, the Latin equivalent of the Greek Hades. He was a terrifying figure in Roman mythology, associated with the punishment of treacherous souls. Giving that name to a large predatory cetacean said a great deal about the fear it inspired in the sailors of antiquity.

The scientific name Orcinus orca, fixed by the naturalists of the 18^th century, therefore literally means “monster coming from the underworld“. The taxonomic rigour of Linnaeus and his successors did not erase that mythological charge: on the contrary, it fossilised it in the international nomenclature.

The English “killer whale”: a translation turned around

In English, the animal was traditionally called killer whale, that is, a whale that kills. The name long coexisted with the more learned orca. Usage is now shifting towards orca, held to carry fewer connotations and to be scientifically more accurate (the killer whale is not a whale in the strict sense, it is an odontocete, and therefore closer to the dolphins).

The origin of “killer whale” is worth following. Spanish sailors, watching killer whales hunt the great whales cooperatively off the Californian coast in the 18^th century, nicknamed them asesinas de ballenas: “killers of whales”. That Spanish name is probably the original source. In English it should have been rendered as whale-killer, with the killer whale as the subject and the whale as the object.

But the translation was turned around: killer whale came to mean a whale that kills, confusing the subject and the object of the predation. That semantic inversion lasted for decades. Modern usage now prefers orca, more precise and free of the ambiguity.

A forgotten name: “grampus”

In French and English texts of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the killer whale is sometimes called “grampus”. The word probably derives from the Latin grandis piscis, “large fish”, by way of the Old French graspeis or craspois. The name has all but disappeared for the killer whale. But it survives in the scientific name of another cetacean: Grampus griseus, Risso’s dolphin, which has nothing to do with the killer whale but inherited the name by taxonomic accident. See our dedicated profile.

Other regional names

In other languages, the killer whale has been given names that say as much about its reputation as about its morphology. In German, Schwertwal (“sword whale”) takes up the blade metaphor. In Japanese, shachi evokes a powerful spirit of the seas. In some Native American languages of the North Pacific, the killer whale is designated by a term meaning “sea wolf”, a metaphor that stresses its nature as a social predator organised in packs. This variety of names points to a simple fact: wherever it lives, the killer whale has marked the human imagination.

Sources

• Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (CNRTL), entry “épaulard”.
• Etymonline, entries “orca”, “killer whale”, “grampus”.
• Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, book IX, c. AD 77.
• Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (Robert).
• Buffon, G.-L. Leclerc de (1782). Histoire naturelle des cétacées.

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