Warren Maguire of the University of Edinburgh and me (Tamsin Blaxter, University of Cambridge) have been running a small online survey about traditional names for a certain creepy-crawly. This is a fascinating creature, not least because it has a bewilderingly diverse set of names — over 300 that we know of so far. This isn’t totally unheard of in historical surveys of traditional dialects of English, but is close to unique in the findings of 21st century dialect surveys: we know of pretty much no other creature (or indeed concept) with so much local dialect variation left. We do still need many more responses to our survey, so please help us out! You can take the survey at this link. Here, though, I wanted to give an interim report on what we’ve been finding — and explore a few of the historical stories that these words tell.
Are Shrimp Bugs? The Arthropod Debate
The arthropod world is filled with a fascinating array of creatures, from scuttling insects to crustaceans that dwell in the ocean’s depths. One popular…