Names for the Mayfly

The mayfly, that insect whose time is up in a mere 24 hours or so, goes by many other names, including bay fly, cisco fly, drake fly, dun, eel fly, fish fly, flying clipper, green fly, July fly, June bug, June fly, and more. This is part of a complete episode.

Transcript of “Names for the Mayfly”

We were talking earlier about mayflies.

There are so many words for mayfly. Bayfly, ciscofly, drakefly, dun, eelfly, fishfly, flying clipper, greenfly, julyfly, junebug, junefly, lakefly. It goes on and on.

Junebug, even though we already have a different Junebug.

Exactly. It happens all the time where two different species will have the same common name.

Yes, same with plants. And why? It’s because they’re phenomenal, right? They all hatch at once.

I saw on planet Earth the same thing happens in a lake in Africa. And they spiral. They do these murmurations of insects, like these columns of insects, right?

Yeah. As they’re born, they mate, and they die, and the fish have a frenzy.

In the space of a day, right? In the space, yeah. Or something like that. A short amount of time. Really quickly.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about any aspect of language. You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

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