Fishkill, New York, is not a piscine slaughterhouse.
In 1996 the village of Fishkill, New York, received a formal request from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to change the village’s name to something less violent. “Fishsave” was the specific suggestion. 32 PETA had assumed (or had pretended to assume) that kill was the time-worn English word for “to murder” (from the 1300s), when in fact it is the not-so-time-worn Dutch word for “river, streambed, creek,” brought into English in the 1600s, in particular related to the European exploration of the Americas.
By the way, Fishkill is near other locations sporting the stream- related syllable, including Catskill (as in Mountains), Beaverkill, and Casperkill. As for the latter, are there any organizations worried about the suggestion of cruelty to friendly ghosts? Or to the fact that it’s difficult to kill a ghost?