Excerpt from All About Sharks: A Complete Guide to the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator (Nov. 2017):

The term “shark” is a derivation of “xooc” (or “xoc”), a Native American word for the fish that that is pronounced as “shok.”
Even though Europeans knew about sharks for generations before meeting Native Americans, “shok” morphed into “shark” as the chosen term for those animals.
Before that, Europeans referred to sharks as “sea dogs.”
-CGW-
#shok #sharks #NativeAmericans #TSF