Why dont we call cows... beef?

[Andy2306]

Why are cows called cows? why arent they called beef? why when we cook cow.. do we change its name? when we cook chicken we dnt call it somthing random. lamb is still called lamb even after we cook it... and pork 2.... y jus call pigs pork instead? wud be so much easier! dont u think?

[jno]

in Walter Scott's historical novels he pointed out that the Saxon serfs had to tend the cows while the Norman lords ate the meat (this was after the Conquest, 1066); so live cows were called by the Saxon name, cattle, while dead ones were called by the Norman word boeuf, now beef.

[maxi29]

The trouble with jno's explanation is that the same distinction holds in French: they have vache and boeuf - unless the implication is that beef is a food for the rich in all countries. The French called sheep and their meat, mouton with, I suppose, the implication that it's for the poor.

Welsh doesn't make the distinction: lamb is oen and lamb(the meat) is cig oen (lamb meat); beef is cig eidion - bullock meat.

[Ethel]

Not all cows are eaten - many are kept as dairy herds.

[Backdrifter]

Does the same apply to why other meats aren't called the name of the animal?

Calfs - veal
Pigs - pork
Deer - venison

No-one ever says they had eggs and 2 rashers of pig.

Yet, from chickens, we get chicken. Duck is from ducks. Turkey (etc). Aren't any birds subject to the different-name-for-the-meat rule?

And why is scampi scampi?

[lynlockwood]

I always liked to think it was because lobsters scamper along the seabed, but I'm sure that isn't the reason.

[jno]

same principle maxi: the class of people that raises them is different from the class that eats them. I don't actually know if Scott's theory is true, but it does underline the fact that the words in English come from different languages.

[Andy2306]

i agree with backdrifter....

what is behind the change of name... class no longer matters.
ethel im not saying cows in particular.. i mean all different animals

[nickmo]

Sorry - trivia time with this one about scampi - its the plural for scampo in Italian - what Italians call a langoustine or Dublin Bay Prawn or Norway Lobster. . . or lots of them.

Guaranteed to win a pint with that one. .

And porcus is Latin for pig - hence leading to Old English pork. And there are other terms for mature, immature, male castrated, large, middle sized, female, - and so on - for differertiating pigs - as there are for deer, sheep, etc.

The husbandry of an animal used to be so much more imnportant to the consumer than it is today - do you know to ask for the produce off a good baconer, or a tup, or a hind, or is a buck better, or a doe? - what is the meat to be used for, how is it to be served - is a gander better eating than a goose - etc etc etc

Not quite the answer to the Q but along the same lines.

[jno]

not a question of whether class matters now Andy, what counts is that it mattered when the words came into use. Once that happens people aren't going to change the words they use unless they've got good reason to. Yes, calf and sheep are Anglo-Saxon, veal and mutton (veau and mouton) are French. The reasoning doesn't seem to apply to birds, though, perhaps because they aren't 'kept' in the same way as larger animals - you don't have full-time chickenherders the way you have shepherds.