Maybe that speaks to the fact that winter flounders have no teeth and spend their winters floundering about in Maine waters. “Flodderen” means to flop about without a sense of particular direction. To “flounder” is quite different than for something to be a “fluke.” There’s an undecided nature of floundering that comes from a different linguistic base - the Dutch. But beyond that, there are some somewhat significant differences, the first of which is etymological. The commonality is that they are both species of flounder. This distinguishes them from their close relative, the winter flounder, which spends the colder months closer to shore and doesn’t do the same type of seasonal migration. Or, at least, that’s where they reside in the summer when they travel into shallower waters, hence their other common name, “summer flounder.” They’re sandy in color and have pretty impressive camouflage that looks a lot like the sand in which they reside. They are the somewhat oddball fish that lie on the ocean floor with two eyes that peek out of the sand looking up into the water for tasty things to eat. That’s because fluke is the common name of a summer flounder, one of the many very flat fish that live in the Gulf of Maine. While I think of the word fluke as being something unexpected and maybe not in line with particular conventions, the word “fluke” actually comes from the Germanic root for “flat.” And that is a better description of the fish than the typical use of the term in the English language.
So, when I found out that there was an interesting divergence in the etymology, or naming, of two very closely related fishes, it seemed appropriate to write about them, particularly because they are not always the headliner fish species in the Maine seafood world. I discovered that maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea when I tried to take a spoken language for the first time in college and didn’t exactly pass my first conversation class.
Maybe it’s because I took Latin for seven years starting in the sixth grade. Etymology has always been a nerdy fascination of mine.
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