I was reading a bit about our great Chief Justice Salmon P Chase (also U.S. Treasury Secretary) and got to wondering about his name, Salmon.
Was that a common name back then?
Of course I like the part in the Wikipedia article where it says
I guess if he can have an uncle named Philander, then it isn’t a huge step to name a nephew of his after a fish
It’s from the name Solomon, in Middle English more frequently Salomon but with every conceivable variant between A and O, including “Salman” and “Salmon.” It can be a surname or a given name, but in either case it’s probably from somewhere in his family.
Looking at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~dav4is/ODTs/CHASE.shtml, it seems our man (b. 1808) had an uncle Salmon Chase (b. 1761) and a great-uncle Solomon Chase (b. 1742). There seems to be a Salomon elsewhere in the family.
That was a very erudite and comprehensive answer.
Much better than mine. I kept trying to relate the name salmon to the tooth fairy somehow.
Now that the question has been expertly answered, the trivia (for those who didn’t read the entire Wiki entry): Salmon P. Chase was depicted on the largest note the Treasury ever issued, the $10,000 bill.
The name of the troutlike fish with pale red flesh is pronounced as a homonym of the present participle of the hypothetical verb *to sam: sammin’.
The human name includes a sounded /l/, like a Jamaican introducing his Italian friend, “'Ey, dis is Sal, mon!” It derives from the Hebrew, and is the name of one of the two spies who scouted Canaan for Joshua prior to the post- Exodus invasion, the one who met and married Rahab the Harlot. It was their son Boaz who married Ruth.
(Philander means “one who loves men,” not in the sense of being gay, but rather in the sense of being a friend to all mankind. It would be the proper translation for the epithet of Finrod Felagund.)
That’s not what google/merriam-webster online told me…
Sounds like a great name for a bishop!
Your definition refers to modern usage; Polycarp was referring, correctly, to etymology.
Yeah, the thread title had me a little confused, too. Like some Native American legend where the parents of a newborn await a visit from the Name Salmon to give their child a moniker.
I’m sure your etymology is correct, but I feel I should point out that I’ve known a few people with the surname Salmon, and they all pronounced it without the “L” sound. They may be going against tradition in pronouncing it that way, or – for all I know – they may be named after the fish 
Just to add to the trivia, Canada also had a Supreme Court justice with “Salmon” as a given name: Mr Justice Christopher Salmon Patterson. Check out his side-whiskers in the photo on the linked page!
The definition quoted gives an etymology.
But the etymology traces the word back to someone’s name, and it’s a fair bet that that person’s name meant “lover of man” or “lover of mankind”. In other words, the quoted etymology doesn’t seem to go as far as it could.