History nerds, language geeks, dog freaks and setter fans, gather round!

We all know what a setter is, right? You got your English, your Gordon, your Irish Red and your Irish Red and White. And we call them setters because they used to 'set' as in 'lie down' or 'set down' when they come across hidden game. Right?

Maybe not. The word ‘setter’ may actually have a much different, and quite surprising, meaning!

Way back in 1570 one of the most important books for dog history nerds was published. It was the first major work to focus exclusively on English dogs. The title was De Canibus Britannicis and it was written by an Englishman, Dr. John Caius, in Latin. In the book’s second chapter, the word 'setter' appears in connection to dogs, for the very first time anywhere. However, for people who didn’t read Latin, the book was impossible to understand. Fortunately, in 1576 Alexander Fleming published Of English Dogges, an English translation of the Caius book.

Here is the most common passage from Fleming’s book that folks point to when arguing that setters got their name because they ‘set’ game (I’ve modernized the spelling a bit.):

When he approches near to the place where the bird is, he layes him down, and with a mark of his paws betrays the place of the birds last abode, whereby it is supposed that this kind of dog is called Index, Setter, being indeed a name most consonant and agreeable to his quality.

Another passage that is often cited to support the ‘set’ means ‘lie down’ idea comes from a book written 150 years before Caius’. In the Master of Game, Edward the Second Duke of York wrote:

Another kind of hound there is that be called hounds for the hawk and spaniels…when they be taught to be couchers, they be good to take partridges and quail with a net.

So why did the Duke call dogs that lay down ‘couchers’ and not setters? Well, to start with, the word ‘setter’ was not applied to dogs until Caius used the term 150 years later. But the main reason is that York didn’t actually write Master of Game. He basically did a wholesale cut-and-paste job of a French book, Gaston Phébus’s Livre de la Chasse and then translated it into English. And since Phébus used the term ‘chien chouchant’ to describe dogs trained to lay down when they found game, York used the English word ‘coucher’, as in ‘couch’ which means to lie down.

So there you have it. If a dog approaches a bird and lays down, he ‘couches’, or 'sets'. And that is why York called them couchers and why Caius called them setters. Right?

Not so fast, cowboys and girls. Let's take a closer look.

In the Caius book, the English word ‘setter’ appears in the Latin text. But Caius was smart enough to realize that his non-English-speaking readers wouldn’t understand what the word meant. So he included a definition for them, writing “…Setter nominare solent, a verbo sette, quod locum designare nostris Britannis significat. “

So what does all that Latin mumbo jumbo mean? Let’s ask Fleming, after all, he translated the book, so he must have translated the definition of setter, right? Yes he did…sort of. Here’s what Fleming wrote (spelling and grammar modernized) :

Setter (comes from the) word Set which signifies in English that which speakers of Latin mean by the words “Locum designare”.

Oh come on Fleming!! Setter comes from 'set' which means .....something something Latin something. WTF man!?

Ok, Ok, let me translate Fleming’s translation:

Setter comes from the word Set which, in English, means the same thing as the Latin term ‘Locum designare’ which means to designate a location.

Designate a location? Not ‘set’ or ‘sit’ or ‘set down’? A setter is a dog that designates a location, as in a dog that POINTS to where something is? or POINTS at something… like…. birds? Was Cauis saying that ‘setter’ meant pointer?

Let’s go deeper.

Caius mentioned another name for dogs that lay on their bellies in front of birds. He wrote “this kind of dog is called Index…”. But unlike the word ‘setter’, Caius doesn’t include a definition for the word index because readers of Latin would already know what it meant. And Fleming doesn’t translate the word in the English version either, he leaves it as is. So like the word setter, index appears in both the Latin and English versions, unmodified. And what exactly did index mean back then? Well, it was a new word for English speakers at the time, first appearing in texts around 1561 just a few years before the Caius book came out. And it referred the part of a sundial that casts a shadow to indicate the time of day. Nowadays, that part of a sundial is no longer called an index. It’s called….wait for it….a pointer.

Holy moly! For Caius, the words Index and setter were synonymous. They both meant ‘pointer’.

Setters weren’t called setters because they 'set'. They were called setters because they indicated — they pointed — game in the same way than a sundial’s index indicated — pointed — the time of day.

Next time: Everybody knows that Long-haired pointing dogs used to be called spaniels. But did you know that short-haired pointing dogs were also called spaniels, even until relatively recently? Stay tuned.

Notes:
1. The title of this post ‘Perdidit in translation’ is Latin for ‘lost in translation’
2. We still use the word ‘set’ to refer to a location even today. We say that a movie or play or story is ‘set in New York” and we call the place or sound stage where a movie is being filmed a ‘movie set’ .

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