Untangling the etymology of Bombay Duck

In 1826, Anne Elwood, a British travel writer and the wife of Major Charles William Elwood of the East India Company, arrived in Bombay, India. In her travelogue (Narrative of a Journey Overland From England to India: 1830), she described the typical breakfast of rice-lentil dish kedgeree (i.e. khichṛī खिचड़ी), served with Bumbelo fish, also known as Bombay duck.

Bombay duck (Harpadon nehereus) is a type of lizardfish popular along the western coast of India, where it is also known as bombil in Marathi and Konkani. It is not a bird but a fish. There are various speculations about the etymology of its English name. One theory claims it derives from the mail trains from Bombay (ḍākgāṛī डाकगाड़ी ‘mail train’ in Hindi and other Indian languages) which supposedly transported sun-dried preparations of the fish to other parts of the country such as Calcutta. This is certainly false: India’s first train ran only on 16 April 1853, between Bombay and Thane, while the term Bombay Duck was already recorded as early as 1816 in a poem attributed to William Combe, written under the pseudonym “Quiz,” in his book The Grand Master: Or, Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan. A Hudibrastic Poem in Eight Cantos, published by Thomas Tegg and illustrated by Thomas Rowlandson.

To extend its shelf life, Bombay duck is usually cut into strips, tied to strings, and dried in the open air by hanging the pieces on poles. This gives its peculiar smell.

Another theory posits that the name “Bombay duck” arose from a mondegreen of the Marathi phrase बोंबील टाक bombīl ṭāk (‘here is Bombil fish’). However, as early as the 17th century, English had already borrowed bumbelo, from the Gujarati cognate બૂમલું būmalũ, which later evolved into Bummalo and then Bombay duck. The Marathi/Konkani bombil also entered Portuguese as bomblim.

In my analysis, the first element, Bombay, is clearly coined on the local Marathi/Konkani bombīl or Gujarati būmalũ as the fish was abduntly found in creeks of Arabian sea around Bombay. This term bombay is a mondegreen (mishearing leading to the closest word in their own lexicon) of the local name Bombil. A mondegreen is a word that is misunderstood and reanalyzed into something different. The name comes from a line in an old Scottish ballad that goes “they killed the Earl of Moray/And laid him on the green”. This was rephrased to “they killed the Earl of Moray/And Lady Mondegreen”.

For example Sās – bahū temple (सास – बहू मंदिर) in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh is a mondegreen of Sahasra bāhu temple (सहस्रबाहु मंदिर). Sahasrabāhu (thousand handed) is an old name for lord Vishnu in Sanskrit, which was reanalyzed into Sās-bahū (mother in law – daughter in law) in Hindi. Similarly Urad dāl उड़द दाल (black gram) in Punjabi is called ਮਾਂਹ माँह mā̃h (derived from Sanskrit माष māṣa = beans) leading to the mondegreen “mā̃ kī dāl” माँ की दाल (mother’s dāl) used by many Delhi Hindi speakers.

Although the word Bombay itself is derived from Mumbai, which is ultimately derived from the name of the presiding deity of Koli fishermen (original inhabitants of the seven islands of Bombay) मुंबादेवी mumbādevī also reffered as मुंबा-आई mumbā-āī (mother Mumba).

The second element, duck, is an innovation by English speakers. This kind of lexical innovation is described by the British lexicographer Eric Partridge (1894-1979) as a form of “jocularity.” For example, Welsh rabbit and Scotch rabbit are humorous names for a toast topped with melted cheese and seasonings. Bombay duck has inspired other analogical formations, such as Digby chicken, which refers to dried or cured herring caught near Digby, a town in southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada. Another example is Gourock ham, meaning salted herring from Gourock, a town in Scotland.