Turtles or Terrapins - a surprising usage

For common names in chelonians we have a situation in that a common name used in the USA. a bastardised version of an Algonqiuin word, came back to Britain, while that term was then largely dropped in the USA except for a small number of species that live in brackish water. The word of course is ’terrapin’. Every schoolboy of my day knew that tortoises live on land, terrapins in or around freshwater and turtles in the sea. Modern American usage is to group three groups into two: turtles and tortoises.

The term ‘turtle’ for all aquatic and semi-aquatic chelonians seems to becoming universal in English-speaking countries. The adoption of American usage in Britain dates from the introduction of vast numbers of captive hatched ‘turtles’ (mainly red-eared) from ‘turtle farms’ in the southern USA from the late 1950s and then of course the ‘mutant ninja turtles’ appeared on screen.

There has though always been great variation and inconsistency. Thus in English usage we have ‘pond tortoise’ and ‘water tortoise’ often used instead of ‘terrapin’. And fully-aquatic chelonians like the softshells and the matamata were often called turtles rather than terrapins. In the USA freshwater turtles have other names like ‘slider’ and ‘cooter’ while they have ‘box turtle’ and ‘box tortoise’.

With the apparently clear divide divide between American and British usage I was very surprised to see ‘terrapin’ used by Raymond Bridgman Cowles (1896-1975) in his autobiographical Desert Journal published in 1977 after his death.  He wrote:

The little aquatic terrapins may, however, void excrement containing Salmonella. (p 176)

Cowles was born in Natal to American missionary (and part-time animal collecting) parents but soon moved to the USA. The question is how common was the word ‘terrapin’ in the USA of Cowles’s day? In that respect I am reminded of a conversation at a conference in the USA in 1973. My colleague, born in 1921, who had worked for  short time as a veterinary surgeon in England, and an American dairy scientist realised that obsolete terms used on farms in England and New England were the same. I wish I could remember what they were. In that vein, was ‘terrapin’ alive in well in the country areas for longer than we thought?

As for me I still cannot say ‘Red-eared Turtle’ without a visible shudder.

This pile of chelonians in Portugal comprises introduced North American and native species

Cowles RB. 1977. Desert Journal. Reflections of a Naturalist. Berkeley: University of California Press