It’s long been a running joke in our lives, on our site, and in our podcast, that the creators of Whale Tales do not think porpoises are the most… “exciting” of cetaceans. We absolutely still love them but we feel like our love comes from a true recognition of exactly what porpoises do, and don’t, have going for them.  

We are also completely willing to admit when we’re wrong and while our research has brought to light some truly fascinating porpoise attributes and behaviours, the origin of their both the common name “porpoise” and the family name “Phocoenidae” (to which all porpoises belong) is just not one of these areas.  

The English common name “porpoise” likely comes from the French “pourpois” which originated from distant Latin “porcopiscus,” which is the combination of “porcus” (pig) and “piscus” (fish). Looking at images of most porpoises I can see where the idea of describing them as cute little pig fish came from.  

As for the Family name “Phocoenidae,” this comes from the Greek phokaina, which was ultimately used to simply mean “porpoise.” In fairly porpoise-y fashion, the Genus “Phocoena” (which encompasses four of the seven recognized porpoise species) also comes from this same Greek root so the meaning of the harbour porpoise’s scientific name, Phocoena phocoena, is basically the porpoise-iest porpoise to ever porpoise!  

Read our Porpoise stories here and don’t forget you can share your encounters of any whales, dolphin or porpoise species here.