What are the actual origins of the fish symbol used to represent Christ?

Factual Questions
1

Is the fish symbol that some Christians use to symbolise Christ really originated from the tantric “yoni,” which refers to female genitalia? I found a website that has parodies of Chick tracts and claims it is so.

http://www.geocities.com/llfptfu/sf.html

Considering the general message the website this was on is portraying combined with the “Ha Ha Only Serious” aspects of the rest of the tract parodies (e.g. much of the bible is taken out of context with rather amusing results, not the Chick ever took anything out of context…), I can’t believe that their claim is completely without some degree of bias.

Anyone know how accurate they are?

2

I was taught in catholic school that the symbol was used to show other catholics where the secret catacombs were so they could hide from the mean ol’ romans. Or something like that.
Of course I was also taught that some dude took one of each creature onto a boat, and then there was a flood that killed everything else.
Peace,
mangeorge

3

Some information can be found at this thread:

The true origin of the Jesus fish?

In particular look at the second post by tomndebb, where in his usual style he imparts valuable information.

4

I thought it might have been mentioned in an earlier thread, but my search criteria weren’t bringing anything up.

5

I vaguely remember something from catechism class that the first letter of each word of the phrase “Jesus Christ, King of the Jews”, in Greek, would translate to “I CH TH I”, which is the Greek root for the word fish, and therefore, the fish symbol was used by early Christians to identify one another. The Latin abbreviation for the similar phrase “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” is “INRI”, which is often inscribed on crucifixes.

6

I too heard what Sputnik said, from a couple of different places, that Jesus = FISH is a Greek acronym, but I heard a slightly different translation:

Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior = Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter. The five initials of this title spell ICHTHUS, which is the actual Greek word for fish. This is mentioned on page 18 of that anti-tract. Odd, since on page 15 it says that “In Greek, the word for fish and the word for womb, were the same: delphos.” FYI, delphos is not the word for fish, and I highly doubt that it’s the word for womb. I seem to remember that delphos is the word for brother.

7

Sputnik: correct on INRI. INRI = Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum as we can see in this Straight Dope column:
Why do folks say “Jesus H. Christ”?

Achernar: Brother = adelphos. Please don’t take the tract mentioned in the OP seriously. In the Great Debates discussion to which I provided a link in my previous post, people mention how the “Mr. Dobbs” you see mentioned in the tract is Bob Dobbs, the “mascot” of the church of the subgenius.

If you’re not familiar with that religious organization, you can read about it here.
What’s the deal with the Church of the Subgenius?

8

Shouldn’t the plural of “crucifix” be “crucifixen”?

9

Thanks for the translation, Arnold Winkelried. I was beating myself up trying to remember the word for “brother”. I did realize, reading the tract, that the history and theology discussed in it were not to be taken seriously, but I couldn’t tell that the Greek translation was meant in jest. I wanted to make sure nobody made the same mistake.