A guppy is a little fish.  This little fish is named after a person, although there seem to have been a few errors along the way.

The Oxford English Dictionary reports that Robert John Lechmere Guppy was a clergyman.  Here’s a pic of old Lechmere, as he was known, and you can see that it would be easy to think he’s a clergyman based on his collar.

But deeper research tells me that he was actually an inspector of schools.

The reason that Lechmere Guppy is in the OED at all is that in 1860s he thought the little fish that bear his name were interesting and unique enough that he packed some up from his base in Trinidad and shipped them off to the British Museum in London.

“Very interestink” thought Dr. Albert Carl Ludwig Gotthilf Guenther, the zoology curator. “Ve haf never zeen vun off zeeze” he said and carefully penned the Latin name Girardinus guppii on his little paper card.

But Guenther was mistaken too because this little fish had already been described in the scientific literature.  So the little fish had its name changed to Lebistes reticulates.

But it was too late, people had already decided they liked the fish and they liked the name Guppy and so it stuck at least as a common name.

It made it out of the museum and into the vernacular in 1925.

Of course the fish had existed before 1925, or even 1860 and people liked it then too.  It had been called the millions fish and they had liked it especially because it gobbled down mosquito larvae.

Old Lechmere was described as white haired although from his picture I’d say there wasn’t much hair there to judge its color. He was tall and stern “rugged in speech, combative in his opinions” and a contemporary said a whiff of cold air seemed to go wherever he went.

While that description doesn’t sound to endearing another one does.

He had been born in England but had moved to Tasmania.  Or at least he tried to move to Tasmania.  His ship was wrecked off New Zealand and he spent two years living with the Maori before moving to Trinidad when he was 22.

He got on famously with his hosts and loved in his later years to tell stories and show off the tattoos he’d gotten on his back while there.  He said he got away just in time to avoid marrying the daughter of the chief.

Today’s episode brought to you by my audio-book Global Wording - The Fascinating Story of the Evolution of English. Available in downloadable form from iTunes or Audible.com or as a CD from bookstores. For more information and a few samples, go to www.globalwording.com