What's in a name?

What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. 
― William Shakespeare

A Pont-Audemer Setter?

I love the French pointing breeds, braques, épagneuls and griffons. But there is one tiresome necessity that comes along with them — the need to explain the breed name to English speakers. For épagneuls, the main thing is getting people to understand that even though we call them spaniels in English, épagneuls are not flushing dogs like Springers and Cockers, they are pointing dogs. In fact Brittany people in the US and UK got so tired of having to explain the name of their breed that they dropped the ‘spaniel’ part completely. The breed is now known as the “Brittany”, unless you have French Brittanies, which are now called Epagneuls Bretons.

A Bourbonnais Pointer and Picardy Setter?

But what about the other épagneul breeds? Have they dropped the ‘spaniel’ part? Nope. The French, Picardy, Blue Picardy, Pont-Audemer and Saint-Usuge are still called spaniels in English. In fact, in French, just about any breed of pointing dog with long hair can be called an Épagneul. So to many French hunters, a Small Munsterlander is a Petit Épagneul de Munster, a Drenthe Patrijshond is an Épagneul de Drenthe and the German Longhaired Pointer is an Épagneul Allemand.

I also wrote about the word braque in another post. Like épagneul, it most often refers to a pointing breed, but this time with short hair. Griffon is similar, but it refers to a pointing breed with a wire-haired coat. Curiously, when Pointers from England first appeared on the continent, they were listed in French show catalogues as 'braques anglais'. English Setters were called “épagneuls anglais”. But, over time, hunters on the Continent adopted the breed’s English names and they became Pointers and English Setters just about everywhere, no matter what the local dialect.

When I was writing Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals, I had to figure out what name to use for each of the breeds I featured. I wrote in the introduction that “denominating the breeds described in this book should have been straightforward; each one has a name in the language of its homeland and, in most cases, the FCI provides an official English translation of it. However, deciding which name to use was anything but straightforward.”

A French Pointer?

In the end I decided to use the name most commonly heard in English speaking countries and not necessarily the official translation provided by the FCI. I then and included a “What’s In a Name” sidebar in each breed chapter to provide an approximate 
pronunciation of the breed name in the language of its home country. Confusing isn’t it? Maybe the Brittany folks were on to something. Maybe all the other épagneul breeds should drop the spaniel part of their names and all the braque breeds should drop the ‘braque’ part.

Or maybe there’s an even better solution.

What if we use the English word ‘setter’ for our épagneul breeds and ‘pointer’ for the braque breeds? It wouldn’t be the first time. Here’s an article from a newspaper published in England in 1937. It was written and illustrated by Baron Karl Reille, a French artist living in Paris at the time. So it is likely that the article is an English translation and that the translator decided to use the terms setter and pointer instead of spaniel and braque. To me it makes a lot of sense. In fact when I go to the park today and someone asks me what kind of dog Leo is, I think I’ll just say, “he’s a Picardy Setter”.

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