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I just started to read an article about sperm whales in latest Smithsonian, when it
occurred to me that I did not know why they were so named. I know that one of
the valuable substances they provide is "spermaceti" which goes back to Middle
English, and is a white wax-like substance taken from the oil in the head of the
whale. I find it hard to believe that it is so named for any resemblance to the
male sexual ejaculate. I found some good sites about the whales on the Internet,
but no mention about how the name was derived. Who can tell me?
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I know that one of the valuable substances they provide is "spermaceti" which goes back to Middle English, and is a white wax-like substance taken from the oil in the head of the whaleBill, I've heard more than once that this is indeed why sperm whales are so called. Spermaceti was definitely reckoned to be semen-like, and at one time may have been assumed to be semen. I'd assume there was some archaic zoological theory (cf Humours and all that) that explained why it should be found in a whale's head. Mind you, do whale's have testes that are readily identifiable as such?  They'd have to be retractable, I'd imagine...  "Oi Moby - you're a Dick with no balls!"  
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Dear fishonabike: I find it hard to believe that even in the Middle Ages people were
ignorant enough to think any animal had it sex glands in its head. I have read of
spermaceti candles. But no semen was ever like that.
And for all their marine adaptations, whales are descendants of land animals,
and their genitals are still closely analogous to their ancestors. The bull whales
may have sex on their ?ninds" but no semen in their noses! Incidentally, imagine
the females giving birth without the young drowning!
Come to think of it, the whales had to invent the missionary position before
there were any missionaries. They could not outdo the turtles.
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Better her than me The newborn calf is about 13 feet (4 m) long and weighs about 1 ton (0.9 tonnes).
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ETYMOLOGY (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School) The pale Usher- threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. "While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true." HACKLUYT "WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted." WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY "WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; A.S. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow." RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY KETOS, Greek. CETUS, Latin. WHOEL, Anglo-Saxon. HVALT, Danish. WAL, Dutch. HWAL, Swedish. WHALE, Icelandic. WHALE, English. BALEINE, French. BALLENA, Spanish. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan. http://www.americanliterature.com/MD/ETOM.HTML
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I finally found the etymology, and I am hard put to comprehend how such a stupid
misconception could have arisen!
sperm - c.1375, probably from O.Fr. esperme, from L.L.
sperma "seed, semen," from Gk. sperma "seed," from speirein
"to sow, scatter," from I.E. *sper- "to strew." Sperm whale
(1830) is a shortening of spermaceti whale (so called because
the waxy substance in its head was mistaken for sperm), from
spermaceti (1471), from M.L. sperma ceti "sperm of a whale"
(from L. cetus "large sea animal"). Spermatozoon is an 1836
formation from Gk. spermato-, combining form of sperma (gen.
spermatos) + zoion "animal."
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"Mind you, do whale's have testes that are readily identifiable as such?
They'd have to be retractable, I'd imagine..."
"Oi Moby - you're a Dick with no balls!" Ha HA Ha! ~~ fishonabikeUh...fishonabike, a fish that gets around as much as you might be more sensible than to verbally tug on the cape of the Superman of the seas - >>MOBY DICK<<. Moby Dick was a Right Whale, right?... Now for the fun part. Not all whales are created equal in terms of
genital equipment. Blue whales, which are the largest animals on Earth, have a pair of testes that weigh a "mere" 26 kg - remarkably small for such a giant beast. Right whales are at the other extreme; a male which may be half the length of a large blue whale male, and weigh a lot less,
has testes (i.e. balls) weighing - wait for it! - one ton! Largest in the animal kingdom.] ~ Phil Clapham A dick with no balls indeed. ~~~ 
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Dear Milum: I think Phil Clapham exaggerates a bit. I found a couple sites about whale testicles, and both gave much less impressive weights. One could not be copied, but here is one that could be: "in the largest cetacean, the blue whale, the testes may be 45cm long and weigh 45kg each. 45kg times 2.2 lb/kg equals 99 pounds. And, for a site about sex records, see: http://www.world-sex-records.com/sex-321.htm
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Dear wwh,
Maybeso bill, but if so, I know two of the fighting Turner boys from Blount county that could give the the lesser whales a taste of comeuppance when it comes to having balls. Besides I don't trust a man when he talks about handling other folks balls...(as in your url source below)
"As has been pointed out, even when the whale testes have been located they are hard to handle since they weigh 60, 15, and 25 lb. in Fin, Sei, and Sperm whales respectively. In Blue Whales the testes may be more than two feet six inches long and weigh up to 100 lb, each!"
(I am also mindful of the fact that this is not a fitting subject for public discussion. There are ladies who read these postings, and I, for one, refuse to say anymore about the size of the balls of Moby's, or for that matter, anyones, Dick.) - mw
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Dear Milum: Now you're hurting my feelings. I had duty as a peckerchecker, and never
had anybody distrust me.
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ETYMOLOGY
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)
Sad that in those days nobody realized the hazard to kids tubercular teachers were. I worked
a year in a Tb San.I'll never forget one old lady with just an occasional slight cough but a
Gaffky 13 on her sputum smear.
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I think it's interesting that this whole topic (once we left why are sperm whales called that, and got onto sexual anatomy of whales) is a YART*-- and not even that old a one.. February or another one of those dreary winter months had a discussion about penil bones..(when a whale gets a boner, it is with the help of a 6 foot (2 m.) or longer bone.) Max as i recall, found a site that had a store just a hop skip and jump from where i work that was selling them, bones that is, not just whale bones, but all sorts of them...and someone also found a Yahoo link to a icelancic museum devoted to penises of the animal kingdom.. my link no longer works or i'd post it.. somehow it did end up on my favorites list..
I guess this is subject, not withstanding Milo's sensabilities, that comes up now and again, and no ever complains...
YART is short hand for yet another rehashed topic
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Dear of troy: I do not feel obliged to apologise for posting about why sperm whales are so called.
The discussion about whales was long ago enough that I was surprised to find I had posted on it
a bit less than six months ago And there are quite a few members who have joined since then.
And in all that long whale thread, I found no mention of the "sperm" question.
A plague on all those who use the term "YART", the board is so dead these days what difference
does a repeat make?
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Dear Dr Bill, i wasn't complaining, just commenting that somehow, again and again, anatomy, especially sexual anatomy comes up as a topic, and it takes a long while for it to be called a yart.
i would also speculate, that what ever people in the past new about whales, they were perfectly happy "beliveing" that the sourse of oil was a teste, and not a brain case.
oil executives "believe" that oil can be pumped with out any enviromental damage.. and tobacco company executives
"believe" that cigarette don't cause cancer or other health problems.. and lots of people "believed" that you could just keep investing in any dot com that came down the pike and make a fortune..
Usually, there is a reason for people to believe what they do, nowdays, its almost always an economic reason, but what ever the reason, whalers might have believed the brain case wasn't-- but was something else..
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Dear of troy: maybe the whalers had "sex on the brain" but the whales did not. I still cannot
imagine the old timers who knew all the essential facts of life could repeat such a bit of
idiocy. Not like the veteran Navy guys telling new recruits that Asiatic vulvas are ninety
degrees rotated.
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I find it hard to believe that even in the Middle Ages people were ignorant enough to think any animal had it sex glands in its headIt does seem weird. However, as I suggested earlier, it does appear to be connected to "metaphysical" viewpoints of the body (Galen's humours and whatnot), which were still prevalent in 15th C, probably later:
In the Galenic model, both men and women were believed to have "seminal vessels" that carried sperm to its point of exit; at the end of the fifteenth century, Jacopo Berengario da Carpi affirmed that these vessels must be longer in the male because male semen was "thicker." How male sperm was generated was a source of some speculation. Did it come directly from the brain via the spinal cord? Was it concocted from purified blood? "The semen is a superfluous nourishment of the body, a material pure and separate from the principle members necessary for generation," wrote Alessandro Benedetti in 1497. " It is believed on the authority of Galen that it is drawn from the brain."
http://www.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/genitalia.html (scroll down the page, or do a Find on "brain") If you have a well-established but incorrect underlying theory, the conclusions reached in theoretical areas are bound to be a mite unusual. "Sperm in the brain" is quite at home when set alongside a belief in personality being dictated by imbalances of blood (sanguine), phlegm (phlegmatic), yellow bile (choleric) and black bile (melancholic).
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Dear Fishonabike: Whalers did not read Galen or any other Medieval authorities. But they
knew how eunuchs and oxen were created.
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Whalers did not read Galen or any other Medieval authorities.
No Bill, but they were treated by doctors that did have indirect reference to Galen & co, and who would have physiological explanations to suit. It was a powerful paradigm that encompassed animal as well as human physiology. People were still being treated by being bled (of excess internal fluids) right up to the 19th C, I believe. They would doubtless ask the doctor what he thought he was doing, and word would get around.
But they knew how eunuchs and oxen were created.
Galen & co. were well aware of the existence of testes and the effects of castration. They just explained these facts in a way we now find unbelievable.
It's fairly hard to believe that the world was thought of as flat, and that the stars were meant to be fixed lights in huge rotating crystal spheres, that made sweet music as they revolved. But everything's straightforward in hindsight. These ideas fitted well with the generally accepted knowledge of their time, and were adopted by all who had an interest (or needed to have an interest - sailors, for instance).
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You know, this is making the "it just looks like sperm" theory look more and more likely.
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Bill, you would have been around when Galen was trotting out his pet theories. What say you?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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this is making the "it just looks like sperm" theory look more and more likelyHmmm, I'm going to have to work harder on this, aren't I? Straight up, FB, people did believe that sperm was produced in the brain, piped down the spinal cord, on into the testes, which were seen more as mini bladders. Remember that knowledge of anatomy was quite limited right up until the 19th C (when people like Burke & Hare provided plenty of dissection material  ), and even then, if you've ever done a dissection, you'll know that real creatures (and even plants) don't look anything like those clear-cut diagrams from which we learn. Things rapidly turn into an amorphous gooey mess. All you need to add to this situation is a physiological paradigm that placed a very strong faith in the ancients, and perhaps the fact that human cerebro-spinal fluid has a vague similarity to semen. Oh, and sperm whales having such huge brains probably played a part. An excerpt from The Household Cyclopedia of General Information (1881) makes it clear that spermaceti was genuinely seen as whale sperm: http://makeashorterlink.com/?W11C26371This is a brilliant example of how history gets rewritten after a new paradigm has been adopted, making it look like that paradigm is a logical continuation of all that went before. The truth is the new medical/physiological paradigm turned the old "scientific" beliefs completely upside-down.
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The article on Biomechanics in this months Natural History magazine doesn't answer Dr Bill's original question, but it does give information about sperm whales and the spermaceti oil--and the relationship between male sperm whales and the oil.. http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory then find Boimechanics in the left hand frame.
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Fantastic article, Helen, and a terrific lesson in ceteophysics!!!
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When I was about ten, I read in a book about several killer whales attacking big whales,
gripping whale's lower jaw, forcing mouth open so tongue could be eaten. I thought at
the time it might be untrue. But here is an excerpt from whale site suggesting it is true:
"no less than seven
gray whales were observed by researchers to
have been killed by orcas. In this photo Van
Sommeran gestures toward the dead whales
torn and broken mandible and the missing
tongue. Long parallel scratched on the whales
flukes and pectoral fins are also clearly
associated with orca predation. "
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