כָּרִישׁ (karish) — shark
Etymology
Ancient Hebrew sailors must have encountered sharks and had a word for them, but that word — if it existed — has not survived in any known text. The practical problem of naming the shark in Hebrew arose only in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) period, when educators decided that Jewish children should learn natural sciences alongside Torah and Talmud. To accomplish this, Baruch Linda of Berlin translated a German natural history textbook (Georg Christian Raff's Naturgeschichte vor Kinder, 1781) into Hebrew, publishing the result in 1788 as ראשית לימודים. Linda faced a challenge: many organisms had no Hebrew names. For the shark — Haifisch in German — he coined דַּג הַאִי (fish of the island). This was followed by other writers including Joseph Sheinhoq (1841) and Mendele Moykher Sforim (1878).
Through the 19th century, several competing names were proposed. Leon Mandelshtam's Russian-Hebrew dictionary (1860) used כֶּלֶב הַיָּם (sea dog) based on the Russian морской собака (morskoy sobaka). Ben-Yehuda eventually adopted this term in volume 5 of his dictionary (1915), influenced by the Arabic كُلَب البَحَر (kulab el-bahar, sea dog) and the French chien de mer. For a time, כֶּלֶב הַיָּם was used by prominent writers including Shlonsky (in his 1933 translation of Brecht's Threepenny Opera) and by Hebrew fishermen. Meanwhile, Moses Margal (1906) proposed גֶּלְדָּן from Talmudic Aramaic גִּילְדָּנָא, and Emanuel Loew (1923) proposed עַמְלֵץ based on an emendation of Psalms 74:14. Neither caught on widely.
The word כָּרִישׁ began appearing in the late 1920s and displaced all competitors. Its first confirmed appearance is in Davar newspaper from 1927; it appears in Yehuda Gur's dictionary and in Yonatan Ratosh's translation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1930. Ratosh may have been the one to introduce it in an earlier (1925) version of the translation, though no copy has been located to confirm this.
The word comes from the Talmud, where the Aramaic form כַּרְשָׁא appears only once, in a sea story in Bava Batra 74a–b. The identity of the karska was debated: Rashi wrote only "that is its name"; Ludwig Lewysohn in his Zoologie des Talmuds (1858) identified it as a small, harmless sunfish. The stronger identification with shark comes from Theodor Nöldeke's 1886 proposal that the Aramaic karska derives from the Greek κάρχαρος (karcháros, a word for shark meaning "jagged" or "sharp-toothed"), which is also the ancestor of the Arabic قَرْش (qarsh, shark). David Talshir, the scholar on whose research this column is largely based, further proposes that the English "shark" (first attested 1569, of unknown origin) may itself derive from the same Arabic word through letter transposition, making it a distant cousin of כָּרִישׁ.
Key Quotes
"פעם אחת הפלגנו בספינה וראינו סלסלה שהיו בה אבנים טובות ומרגליות וסובבים אותה מיני דגה בשם כריש. צלל צוללן להביאה, ורגש (הכריש) וביקש לתלוש את ירכו. הטיל (בו הצוללן) נאד של חומץ וצלל" — Bava Batra 74a-b (Talmudic Aramaic; translated by David Talshir)
"הטור הזה המבוסס בעיקר על מחקריו על שמות הכריש המופיעים בספרו ׳שמות חיים׳ (מוסד ביאליק, 2012) מוקדש לזכרו" — Elon Gilad, dedicating the column to the memory of Prof. David Talshir
Timeline
- Pre-biblical period: Hebrew sailors almost certainly had a word for shark; it has not survived
- 1788: Baruch Linda coins דַּג הַאִי (island fish) in his natural history textbook ראשית לימודים
- 1858: Ludwig Lewysohn identifies Talmudic כַּרְשָׁא as a small harmless sunfish in Zoologie des Talmuds
- 1860: Leon Mandelshtam proposes כֶּלֶב הַיָּם in his Russian-Hebrew dictionary
- 1877: Yisrael Zev Shperling uses variants of Russian אֲקוּלָא (akula) in his Verne translation
- 1886: Nöldeke proposes Greek κάρχαρος as the source of Aramaic כַּרְשָׁא and Arabic قَرْش
- 1906: Moses Margal proposes גֶּלְדָּן from Talmudic Aramaic
- 1907: Ben-Yehuda and Gur include כֶּלֶב הַיָּם as the shark in their pocket dictionary
- 1915: Ben-Yehuda's large dictionary establishes כֶּלֶב הַיָּם as the shark (and not the seal)
- 1923: Emanuel Loew proposes עַמְלֵץ; the proposal circulates among scholars
- 1925–1927: כָּרִישׁ begins appearing in the Hebrew press (possibly introduced by Ratosh)
- 1927: First confirmed appearance in Davar newspaper
- 1930: כָּרִישׁ appears in Gur's dictionary and in Ratosh's Verne translation
- Modern Hebrew: כָּרִישׁ is the universal term; כֶּלֶב הַיָּם means seal
Related Words
- כֶּלֶב הַיָּם — sea dog; originally a name for the shark; now means seal
- דַּג הַאִי — island fish; earliest modern Hebrew term for shark (Linda, 1788)
- גֶּלְדָּן — proposed name from Talmudic Aramaic גִּילְדָּנָא; not adopted
- עַמְלֵץ — proposed name based on emendation of Psalms 74:14; not adopted
- כַּרְשָׁא — Talmudic Aramaic form; source of the modern Hebrew word
- קַרְחַרִיָס — Greek κάρχαρος; the proposed ultimate source