Clam Names

Because sometimes just knowing the names (finally!) is useful, if not necessary:

All hard-shell clams on the East Coast are the same species, Mercenaria mercenaria, and their common names connote their sizes. The quahog (pronounced CO-hog) or chowder clam is the largest, followed in descending order by the cherrystone, top-neck and little-neck.

[Erica Marcus, "Hail the Humble Clam", Newsday via Baltimore Sun, undated c. 26 August 2005.]

[Update on 30 August 2005: As of today, I am Google's top reference for "Clam Names" (out of "about 254,000")!! Is that cool or what? — Oh gosh, I also am #2 for "Pink Lemons", out of "about 175,000". Oh my, oh my.]

Posted on August 26, 2005 at 22.28 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Common-Place Book, Food Stuff

One Response

Subscribe to comments via RSS

  1. Written by Bearcastle Blog
    on Thursday, 26 January 2006 at 13.10
    Permalink

    Cottonmouth Water Moccasins

    Continuing the path started in a previous small but informative posting ("Clam Names") towards sorting out common names for common objects, today I discovered in reading the latest New Yorker that the "water moccasin" and "cottonmouth" snake are …

Subscribe to comments via RSS

Leave a Reply

To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.

I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.