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I read once somewhere that the word 'sake' (酒, Japanese rice wine) comes from
sha-ke (鮭, salmon). Can someone explain what this connection is?

Any thoughts on why _most Japanese people_ * don't know the origin of the word
sake are also appreciated.

_*Most Japanese people who I know ... @Tsuyoshi Ito may know more._
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2011-06-20T01:14:58.467
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etymology
What is the etymological connection between sake (alcohol) and sha-ke (salmon)?
One of several explanations for the origin of the word 鮭 is that the colour of
the salmon's flesh is that of a "drunk red", and that subsequently the word
"sake" derived from either "sakake" (酒気, tipsiness) or "ake" (朱 scarlet, red).

The fact that this is in no way verified must help explain why most Japanese
you encountered had no idea about it… (and also, the derivation of the name is
in the opposite direction of that which you implied.)

(source: <http://gogen-allguide.com/sa/sake_sakana.html>)
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2011-06-20T04:43:10.023
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What is the connection? None, apparently.

According to [語源由来辞典](http://gogen-allguide.com/sa/sake.html) (always a good
place to check on that sort of question), none of the likely etymologies have
anything to do with "sha-ke" or fish in general.

The above site mentions a couple of theories for the etymology of the word
"さけ", including:

  * 汁【しる】 ＋ 食【け】  
'soup' 'eat/food'

  * 栄【さか】え水【みず】  
'water that makes you prosper'

but goes on to state that the most plausible etymology is the following: さ is
a prefix (of unspecified meaning) attached to き, an older word for sake. The
final vowel assumedly changed somewhere along the way.
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Let me say a word about the secondary part of the question:

> Any thoughts on why _most Japanese people_ * don't know the origin of the
> word sake are also appreciated.

A simple answer is because understanding the etymology requires study and
research and most Japanese people are not linguists. Ask an average English
speaker what the etymological connection is between, say, _meal_ and _meat_ ,
and I would not expect that you will get any answer beyond a guess. Being
fluent in a language does not mean that one knows the etymology.

But there is something more on this. I heard that even when you ask linguists,
it is often more difficult to trace the origin of a word in Japanese than in
English. This is because the origin of the Japanese language itself is unclear
(see [Japonic languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages) and
the [classification of
Japonic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Japonic)). If you
think about the etymological study as a kind of detective work, there is often
not much clue on which a theory about the origin of a word can be built. On
the other hand, there are [many languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-
European_languages) which have common origins with English, and it is often
possible to get some clue by comparing them.
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