Information on freshwater crayfish both in natural history and literature goes back to ancient times, reflecting the interactions of humans with the natural environment. From Aristotle to modern astacologists, different terms have been used in different European countries to express the notion "crayfish". Inconsistency in the usage of terms in scientific literature generated confusion in the past. The present work aims to review, and present evidence for, the use of the terms that describe the freshwater crayfish in different European cultures. In Ancient Greek, "kappa alpha rho alpha beta omicron sigma" (karavos) was used for spiny lobster, while "alpha sigma tau alpha kappa omicron sigma" (astakos) for both lobster and freshwater crayfish. The word "alpha sigma tau alpha kappa omicron sigma" was used by Greeks for naming towns and persons and as a city symbol on coins. No specific term denoting the freshwater crayfish in Ancient Latin could be identified. In the Renaissance, the freshwater crayfish was "cambarus" in popular Latin and "astacus" in scientific Latin. Modern words such as in Italian (gambero), Castilian (cangrejo), Catalonian (cranc), and Old French of southern France (chambre and cambre) seem to be descendants of the popular Latin term (cambarus). One might detect similarities in the sound of the words for freshwater crayfish across European countries: the German (Krebs), French (ecrevisse), or English (crayfish), and these appear to have affinities with the terms in Old Dutch, Old English, Luxemburgian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. The Slavic term "rak" is echoed in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Old Prussian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, all Slavic languages from the former Yugoslavia, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian. These and more terms that are discussed in the paper form a varied body of examples that illustrates the complex cultural and linguistic relations arisen around the freshwater crayfish across Europe, over time.
