So, I love learning etymology (that is the study of words). This is not to be confused with entomology, which is the study of insects (not a fan). So much so, that I will frequently grab my phone in the middle of a conversation with friends (thanks for putting up with it) if I hear a random word or phrase that intrigues me. Why do we say something has “gone pear-shaped”, or why do Americans pronounce ‘herbs’ with a silent ‘h’ and the British with an audible one, or perhaps why do we pronounce ‘salmon’ the way we do?
Well, on that last one, I’m going to expound a bit today. I was out to dinner with friends the other night and one of them randomly asked me (as he knows I’m word-nerd) why we don’t pronounce the ‘l’ in salmon. It was on the menu and it piqued his interest. Another interesting bit of back-story is that I am long-time friends with a family whose last name is “Salmon” in which you DO pronounce the ‘l’ and it is also the name of a little municipality in Texas where that family is assumed to have settled many years ago. So, I’ve always known that ‘SaLmon’ was the family or place, while ‘salmon’ was the fish. And I do LOVE a good salmon dish for dinner. I cook it often in our home.
But back to the original question – Why do we not pronounce the ‘l’ in ‘salmon?’ My original guess was that is probably came to American English via French, which wasn’t far off. Many of the places one can actually catch salmon regularly in North America are in Canada (though this has expanded to much of the US today), so French Canadian could maybe have something to do with it as well. Turns out, I wasn’t too far off the mark.
So it is generally believed that we derive the name for the fish ‘salmon’ from the Latin ‘salmonem’ which is likely derivative from ‘salire’ which is Latin for ‘to leap.’ That Latin then became Anglo-French ‘samoun’, Old French ‘salmun’, and Modern French ‘saumon’. This is where we get our pronunciation of the word. Though, when deciding on proper spelling, it seems the English wanted to harken back to the original Latin, so they included the ‘l’ in the spelling but retained the French pronunciation. If you’ve ever studied French pronunciation at all, you’ll know they decide which letters to actually pronounce like they’re rolling a D20 for each letter and only multiples of 3 count.
So, there you have it. That is why we pronounce ‘salmon’ as “sam-un”, but still spell with that structural support ‘l.’
Sources:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190402194009/https://www.etymonline.com/word/salmon