Nobody knows for sure where the word butterfly came from, and even the major English dictionaries call its origin unclear.1Grammarphobia. The Grammarphobia Blog: What’s buttery about butterflies? What we have are a few competing explanations, one about color and one about old superstitions involving stolen dairy. The word is also one of the oldest in English, far older than the catchy stories people now tell about it.2Belleville News-Democrat. How Did a Butterfly Get Its Name?
The Butter-Coloured Fly Theory
The most widely repeated explanation is that butterfly comes from “butter-coloured fly.”3Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. How Did a Butterfly Get Its Name? The likely inspiration is the brimstone butterfly, a common species in Britain and Europe. The male has wings the sulphur yellow of fresh butter.4Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. How Did a Butterfly Get Its Name? The female is a much paler whitish-green, so only half the species fits the description.5Journal of the Malta Philatelic Society. Dazzling brimstone butterfly which was the reason of the whole family of ‘butterflies’
Dictionaries list the pale yellow wings of some European butterflies, perhaps the brimstone, as one possible source.6Grammarphobia. The Grammarphobia Blog: What’s buttery about butterflies? The brimstone spends the winter as an adult and is often one of the first butterflies on the wing on warm days in early spring. A bright yellow insect appearing around the time cows returned to pasture and butter-making picked up would be easy to name for butter.
The “fly” part is not odd either. Old English used the word broadly for almost any flying insect, not just houseflies. That is why we also have dragonflies, fireflies and mayflies. A yellow flying insect called a “butter fly” fits a familiar pattern.
Popularity is not proof, though. The color theory is favored because it is simple, not because a written record confirms it, and words this old rarely leave notes explaining why they were chosen. The brimstone’s yellow matches fresh butter, but butter’s color shifts with the season and what the cows ate, so the comparison was never precise. Other yellow European butterflies exist, so the word may have been applied to yellow butterflies in general.
The theory also has some explaining to do. English speakers would have had to coin a compound of “butter” and “fly” for one yellow insect and then stretch it to every butterfly, including white, orange and blue ones. That kind of stretching is common, since a word for one familiar member of a group often becomes the label for the whole group. Still, the name does not fit most butterflies, which is why folklore is offered as a rival explanation.
Witches, Stolen Butter and Milk Thieves
In German folklore, butterflies were said to be witches who shapeshifted to steal cream and butter from farmers.7Claudia Merrill. How a Simple Butterfly Caused Panic in Medieval Germany People also believed that a butterfly touching milk would spoil it.8Claudia Merrill. How a Simple Butterfly Caused Panic in Medieval Germany Older German names reflect this: “Molkenstehler” or “Molkendieb,” meaning whey thief, and “Milchdieb,” milk thief.9Claudia Merrill. How a Simple Butterfly Caused Panic in Medieval Germany10Department of Biology. Why are butterflies called Butterflies? Another old name, “botterlicker,” means butter-licker.11Department of Biology. Why are butterflies called Butterflies? Names built on actions or crimes suggest a belief shared widely enough to enter everyday speech, though the names alone cannot show how old the belief was.
For a farm household, this was not idle talk. Butter and cream were valuable food, and a dairy producing less than expected, or milk that soured or would not churn, was a real loss. In a time before germ science, unexplained spoilage was often blamed on witches or other malicious beings.
The modern German word may carry the same idea. Schmetterling is linked to an old word for cream, Schmetten, because of the same belief that witches turned into butterflies to steal cream and other milk products.12Language Log. What does “Schmetterling” sound like to a German? That link is an etymological proposal, not something recorded in a document that states the reason for the name.
Dictionaries also suggest that butterflies may have been seen feeding on or hovering over butter or buttermilk.13Grammarphobia. The Grammarphobia Blog: What’s buttery about butterflies? The name might simply describe where people noticed these insects, near the dairy. That is not far-fetched. Many butterflies sip fluids from damp ground, sweat and other sources to get salts and minerals, so an open churn or spilled buttermilk on a farm could attract them.
The Flutterby Myth
A popular claim says butterfly began as a swap of the first sounds of “flutter by.”14Rebeccas Butterfly Reflections. Butterfly and Language One version says a tongue-tied English VIP mixed it up and the slip caught on.15Belleville News-Democrat. How Did a Butterfly Get Its Name? But the word dates back to at least the year 700, when English was still Old English.16Belleville News-Democrat. How Did a Butterfly Get Its Name? Old English and other Germanic languages also had similar butter-based words.17Rebeccas Butterfly Reflections. Butterfly and Language There was never a “flutterby” for anyone to scramble.
Such a swap is a slip made by a speaker, and it only takes hold if the original phrase was already in use. For “flutterby” to be the original, English speakers would have needed that compound centuries before the butter-based word is first recorded, and no such record exists. The written evidence shows the butter word was already established in Old English, so the swap story arrives far too late.
What Other Languages Call Butterflies
Many names elsewhere come from beliefs about souls rather than butter. One theory says Spanish mariposa comes from “María pósate,” meaning “Mary, alight!”18Wiktionary. mariposa – Wiktionary, the free dictionary Butterflies were thought to be souls of the dead, and the Virgin Mary was linked with souls.19Wiktionary. mariposa – Wiktionary, the free dictionary If the story is right, a phrase spoken to the insect gradually fused into a single word.
The Russian babochka connects to an old idea of a human soul living in an insect.20SEEFA Journal. The Anthropology of Birth in Russia and Ukraine That ties the name to belief instead of appearance. In Polish, the related word baba means ladybug,21SEEFA Journal. The Anthropology of Birth in Russia and Ukraine so the same root was applied to a different insect, and such names were not limited to butterflies.
The soul idea is not limited to Spain and Russia. The change from crawling caterpillar to winged adult looked to many people like death and rebirth, which gave the insect a natural place in ideas about the afterlife. In ancient Greek, psyche meant both soul and butterfly, binding the two ideas in one word.
In Aztec Mexico the butterfly had its own word. In Nahuatl, the Aztec language, it was papalotl, which was also used as a person’s name.22Wired Humanities. papalotl A 1634 phrase used it for flying into a fire like a moth.23Wired Humanities. papalotl The word lives on: Mexican Spanish uses papalote for a kite, borrowed from Nahuatl.
How Individual Butterflies Got Their Common Names
Legend says early Dutch and English settlers in North America named the monarch after Prince William of Orange, later King William III.24U.S. National Park Service. NETN Species Spotlight: Monarch Butterfly25Butterfly Lady. What’s in a Name? The butterfly’s bold orange matched his title.26Butterfly Lady. What’s in a Name? This is told as legend, not documented fact.
Many names just describe what you see. The cabbage white is named for its white upper wings.27Birds and Blooms. What Gardeners Should Know About Cabbage Whites Its name also points to the plant its caterpillars eat, which is why you often find the butterfly around cabbage and kale in gardens. Males have one dark spot on each forewing and females two, with charcoal tips.28Birds and Blooms. What Gardeners Should Know About Cabbage Whites The white peacock is named for small black spots on its hindwings that resemble a peacock’s eyespots.29Florida Wildflower Foundation. White peacock
Common names also vary by place. The same species can have different common names in different countries, and there are no official rules for them. That is why scientists also use a single scientific name.
Who Names New Butterfly Species Today
When Linnaeus named nearly 200 butterflies in the 1700s, he used names from classical mythology.30Wikipedia. List of Lepidoptera in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae One theory says he drew on heroes of Homer’s Iliad for the most striking ones.31Journal of the Linnean Society. Linnaeus’ nomenclature of butterflies deduced from some mythological figures participating in the Trojan war Today a scientific name, the official Latin-style name, must follow an international rulebook for naming animals.32Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. How to describe a new species in zoology and avoid mistakes Butterfly naming has an unusually high rate of mistakes, though, such as badly formed names or names not registered in the official database.33Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. How to describe a new species in zoology and avoid mistakes
An official name has two parts, a genus and a species. Two butterflies in the same genus share the first word and differ in the second. A genus is a group of closely related species, so moving a species to a different genus changes the name even though the insect has not changed.
DNA testing keeps shaking things up. It has revealed many butterflies that look alike but are separate species,34Diversity. DNA Barcoding and Taxonomic Challenges in Describing New Putative Species: Examples from Sootywing and Cloudywing Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) so scientists either create new names or revive old ones.35Diversity. DNA Barcoding and Taxonomic Challenges in Describing New Putative Species: Examples from Sootywing and Cloudywing Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) Two butterflies can look nearly identical while their DNA shows they have been separate for a long time. The older name may then belong to one group, and a new name is needed for the other. One Florida swallowtail was raised from subspecies to full species after DNA showed it was very different.36PubMed Central. Genomic evidence suggests further changes of butterfly names One genetic review proposed 14 new genera and moved 34 species to different genera.37PubMed Central. Genomics-guided refinement of butterfly taxonomy
That is why field guides printed years apart can list different scientific names for the same butterfly. It reflects new DNA evidence, not a mistake by the guide, and common names like monarch usually stay the same.
Discoverers usually choose the name themselves.38Research News. New butterfly species naming rights auctioned for $40,800 But naming rights for a new owl butterfly found at the Florida Museum of Natural History sold at auction for $40,800 to fund research.39Research News. New butterfly species naming rights auctioned for $40,800 A German program lets donors choose a species name for at least €2,600.40PubMed Central. Naming the menagerie: creativity, culture and consequences in the formation of scientific names One auction of 12 species’ names raised $182,500 for conservation.41The Wildlife Society. Should species names go to the highest bidder? Critics worry that names honoring donors or companies cheapen science.