The Canary Outrage

Funniest thing about language is that we all know what a word means even if its derivation makes no sense. Take the lovely canary, for instance.

Canaries are so named because they were first found on the islands of the same name, and most of us have always assumed that the Canary Islands were so named because they were home to millions of the little yellow birds. But such is not the case – in fact, the birds were named after the islands, not the other way around.

The truth is that the islands were first called Canariae Insulae by the Romans about 100BC. They were thus named because… well, you guess it – just think of the Latin term canis. That’s right, the islands were first called, at least in recorded history, “the island of dogs”, apparently by reason of packs of remarkably large dogs seen there.

It seems that the bird was introduced to Spain in the late Middle Ages where the trade in these beautiful little singers was controlled by monks who, appropriate to their vows of celibacy and with an eye to monopolisation, sold only male canaries, thus ensuring that no baby canaries would show up without the monks making a profit.

The Italians soon got around that by importing a few females from the islands and democratising the trade. And soon enough, in the natural course, enough of these little songbirds escaped domesticity to propagate the “wild” canary. (That we would consider a reversion to their original state as “wild” says something about our predilection to bend all of nature to our will, but that rant is for another day.)

Lest we consider the monks’ attempts to control the destiny of these little sprites an outrage, let’s first consider that word, “outrage”. Its derivation is not what you think!

Ask almost anyone to guess the origin of the word “outrage” and they’ll tell you it simply means raging out, which would make sense. Except that making sense doesn’t always work when it comes to language.

The word is imported intact from French, where in turn the word was derived from outre, which means “beyond”, and rage, which can mean “rage”, but is a much wider word with overtones of “enthusiasm” or “over the top” (as in “the latest rage”). Historically the word in French took on the current meaning in both French and English, where it makes some sense in French, but is a linguistic orphan in English. “Out” had nothing to do with it.

So there. Hopefully this doesn’t leave you outraged about canaries.