Turtles or Terrapins - a surprising usage
Malcolm Peaker (noreply@blogger.com)
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 tort