porcellana

The Italian word porcellana originally referred to a cowrie shell—specifically, the Venus shell whose smooth, curved, white surface resembled (to Italian eyes) a pig's back. Porcella means 'little sow' in Italian, from Latin porcus (pig). The shell was porcellana—'the pig-like thing.'

When Marco Polo and other travelers brought back descriptions of fine Chinese ceramics, Italians noticed the same smooth, translucent whiteness they associated with cowrie shells. They called the pottery porcellana—not because it had anything to do with pigs, but because it reminded them of a shell that reminded them of pigs.

China had been making porcelain since the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), over a thousand years before Europeans saw it. The Chinese word for the material (瓷, cí) carries no animal associations. But through Italian, the word that traveled to English, French, German, and most European languages was the pig-shell word.

European potters spent centuries trying to reverse-engineer Chinese porcelain. German alchemists in Meissen finally cracked the formula in 1708—mixing kaolin clay with feldspar and firing at extreme temperatures. The word for their product remained Italian, the product itself remained Chinese in concept, and the pig connection was thoroughly forgotten.