HOW BEEF GOT ITS NAME

In the modern English language, the word ‘beef’ owes its origins to factors and circumstances that are all but English. Etymologically speaking, the word ‘beef’ is derived from Latin; the ancient Romans referred to the meat of cattle as bubula. This was in contrast to the term bovus, which was commonly used to refer to anything pertaining to oxen and cows. The influence of the Latin terminology is clearly still evident today, its impact unmissable in everyday words such as ‘bovine’, and more scientific terms such as ‘Bovinae’, identifying a biological sub-family that includes various forms of hoofed animals, from domestic cattle to yaks, water buffalos and American bison.

And yet, in spite of the similarities between Latin bubula and our beef, the connection between the two is not as straight forward as one might think. The Romans did conquer Britain and left much evidence of their empire when they left the land in AD 410. However, a direct use of the Latin language was not one such legacy. Indeed, by the time Old English emerged as an early incarnation of the language we use today, Germanic influences had all but revolutionized grammar, terminologies and common references. By the seventh century, the Latin "bubula" had long been left behind and early English speakers referred to cattle and their meat by the Anglo-Saxon "cu", a term that would develop into the Middle English "cou", a not-so-early ancestor of our ‘cow’. While this development is unsurprising, it does not answer the question of how beef became known as such. For an answer, we need to skip to 1066, to the battle of Hastings and the Norman-French invasion. As William the Conqueror claimed the shores of Britain, he also laid claim to its language. After the conquest, the Norman aristocracy that took control of England had no interest in adopting the local Anglo-Saxon idiom, as it was perceived to be inappropriate for any form of nobility or genteel expression.

As the French nobles shunned the use of the common "cou" to refer to the meat of cattle, they opted for their own "boef" – a derivative of the Latin term "bubula" and an ancestor of the modern French word "boeuf". While various manifestations of the Anglo-Saxon Cou remained in use among peasants to refer to live cows, Norman-French speakers – the most common consumers of the animals’ flesh who, however, did not often deal with the live beasts – established their own "boef" as a suitable term for the meat. The dichotomy became established in Britain and "cou" and "boef" co-existed in everyday expression. Through a convoluted etymological journey, then, the meat of cattle found its own seating within the English language, developing through the ages and becoming what has been known for centuries as ‘beef’.

By Lorna Piatti-Farnell in "Beef - A Global History (Edible)", Reaktion Books, London,2013 excerpt p.21. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.