Dagon the fish god

See the Dagon entry. The fish etymology and the mermaid iconography both descend from medieval commentary on a Hebrew pun, and the etymology of Dagan or Dagon is unresolved, not settled toward "fish." DDD calls the fish, grain, and storm etymologies all equally dubious and treats the fish reading as a secondary folk etymology. The fish tradition goes back to a specific textual crux. At 1 Samuel 5:4 the Masoretic Text's obscure raq dagon nish'ar 'alayw, "only Dagon was left on him," was emended by Wellhausen to dago, "his fish part," a reading anticipated by Jerome (who glosses the name dag 'on, "fish of sorrow") and later Jewish tradition, and BHS has now dropped the emendation. Dagan was a major Mesopotamian and West Semitic god well before the Philistines adopted him, attested from the third millennium BC at Ebla and Mari and identified at Ugarit as the father of Baal; the Philistines are the ones who shift the vowel from Dagan to Dagon.