1147: How Dolphin Could have been 'Sea-Pig' Jan 29, 2018

As has been discussed before, the Old English for 'dolphin'—'mereswīn' meaning 'sea-pig'—may sound silly now, but as a compound probably makes more sense than the Greek word that entered the language via French which we use today, since it does not relate to anything else most people would know or be able to associate to the word. Compounds reduce the amount of words have to memorize and allow people to relate it to other words more easily, however, compounding is far more common in Germanic languages than it is in Romance languages. However, not only is it possible to compound in Romance languages, it was theoretically plausible that 'dolphin' could have been a compound. The word 'porpoise' comes from the Old French 'porpois' but is ultimately based on a Latin phrase 'porcus marinus' meaning ‘sea hog’. In this way, essentially the same compound arose in two different languages, but 'dolphin' nevertheless persisted. 

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