Does anyone use that anymore? Or is ‘tuna’ the only ‘acceptable’ word for the fish?
Anecdotal only, but I’ve never heard that term before now.
Nor I. And it didn’t remind me of fish of the sea, anyway.
Nor I.
I’ve heard it before, but half-considered it to be some sort of pluralisation of tuna. Tunae, if you will. I’m sure that’s wrong, but there you are.
More like Fish of Paris, right?
I’ve seen it used in documents written during the Tudor era.
Can’t say that either. All I can say is that I had just watched Unforgiven the other night and there was an amusing and (for me) unusual term for where the gal did not get cut. It rhymed with “tunny” – thus the connection.
If I’ve missed the general intent of “Fish of Paris” I’d love to be better informed. 
Tunny, evidently pronounced to rhyme with “funny,” can mean two things:
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Synonymous with tuna (which itself means one of several species of fish); or
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The horse mackerel, or some other large fish in the mackerel family.
Brainy Dictionary, not my favorite source for word meanings but in this case making the needed distinction, has this definition for meaning #2:
From what I was able to piece together from the rather disjointed Google references, it’s far more often a synonym for “tuna” but sometimes used for the somewhat larger, non-tuna fish.
From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
Tunny is far older. It was a standard British usage into this century, although I don’t know how much it is used today. In the U.S. the Spanish derived tuna has superseded it, but I’m pretty sure you could find tunny used until the 1920s, as a quick newspaper search confirms.
Count me in the group that have never heard it used before.
Never heard it used in Britain, and now I’m worried I’ve accidently been using an American version instead of a proper word for my whole life.
From the OED (1971 edition):
First entry: Indian fig; prickly pear
Second entry: Name in California for the tunny
Third entry: A species of eel found in New Zealand
I think the only time I’ve met “tunny” was when I read Pinocchio as a child.
I first ‘heard’ of the word when I read Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki. ‘Tunny’ were a large part of their food on the way to Polynesia. I heard the word while watching a documentary last week, which promted me to ask about the usage. IIRC, it was a French production.
So ‘tunny’ was used by a non-native English speaker (Heyerdahl) in the late-1940s, and by a non-native English speaker in a recent film.
It’s still used here, by fishermen. That’s what my uncle always called yellowfin and other tuna. But you get tuna in the restaurant.
[Lawrence From Office Space]
No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin’ something like that, man.
[/Lawrence From Office Space]