What did you call them?

When I was a kid, we knew about lightning bugs in July. We would capture as many as we could and place them inside a glass jar with a metal lid that had air holes punched in. It was amazing to see the bugs light up.

When my children were small, I remember reading the book Sam and the Firefly by P.D. Eastman. But it wasn’t until the other day that it dawned on me that lightning bugs were actually fireflies, or to be technical, the ones we knew were Cyphonocerus ruficollis.

I never used the term firefly. To me, these insects were simply lightning bugs. I wonder who first termed them that? Shouldn’t it be “lighting” bugs, because what they do is light up? How did they get to be “lightning” bugs? There was never any bolt of lightning coming from them. And who taught us the term for these bugs? Our parents? The kids on the block? Or did we just pick it up by osmosis?

This all came to mind when I looked out my second floor bedroom window in the middle of the night last week. It was pitch black in the backyard and suddenly several lightning bugs did what they do. It was a magical sight.