the.com/lingcod

means A large, sharp-toothed predatory fish of the North Pacific, prized for eating despite belonging to the greenling family rather than true cod.

from English-speaking settlers on the Pacific coast, confronted with a fish they didn't have a name for, reached for familiar ones: 'ling' (an old name loosely applied to various elongated fish) and 'cod' (the universal go-to for 'edible fish of consequence'). The compound stuck even though the lingcod is a cousin to neither — it's a greenling, taxonomically unrelated to both namesakes. The name is less a lineage than a shrug of convenience.