Other Names for Mahi Mahi: Dorado, Dolphinfish, and Why It Has So Many

One fish, sold under one scientific name, answers to a different word in nearly every coastal language on Earth. That’s not an exaggeration: mahi mahi is one of the most differently named fish in the seafood trade, and the reasons behind each name tend to say something real about the culture that coined it, whether that’s a description of its color, its fighting ability, or its resemblance to something else entirely.

Here’s a tour through mahi mahi’s names around the world, and the story behind the two that dominate English.

Mahi Mahi: Hawaiian for “Very Strong”

The name most Americans know today comes from Hawaiian, where mahi means “strong,” repeated for emphasis the way Hawaiian often doubles a word to intensify its meaning. It’s a direct nod to how hard the fish fights once hooked, all speed and jumps rather than the slow, grinding pull of a bottom fish. The name spread from Hawaiian fishing culture into broader American use over the 20th century and eventually became the dominant restaurant and market name in the United States.

Dorado: Spanish for “The Golden One”

Across Mexico, Central America, and most of Spanish-speaking Latin America, mahi mahi goes by dorado, meaning “golden” or “gilded.” It’s a straightforward description of the fish’s brilliant yellow-gold flanks, and it’s the name used almost universally by anglers fishing the Pacific coast from Baja California down through Central America. Portuguese-speaking Brazil uses a close cousin of the word, dourado, for the same reason.

Names Across Europe and Asia

The naming pattern holds across most of the world: describe the color, or describe the fight. In France, it’s known as coryphène or dorade coryphène, echoing the scientific genus name directly. Germany calls it Goldmakrele, literally “gold mackerel,” despite mahi mahi not being a mackerel at all. In Italy, it goes by lampuga or corifena. In Japan, sushi and sashimi markets use shiira, a name specific enough that the FDA’s own seafood naming guidance lists it as a recognized vernacular term tied to the U.S. market name.

Malta’s Lampuki: A Name Tied to a Whole Season

Few places have built as much culture around this fish as Malta. There, mahi mahi is called lampuki, and its autumn migration past the islands, roughly mid-August through December, is celebrated with a fishing method called kannizzati that hasn’t changed significantly since Roman rule. Fishermen weave palm fronds into floating rafts towed out by traditional wooden luzzu boats; lampuki gather in the rafts’ shade at midday, and fishermen wait for a school to build before encircling it with a net. Every August 15th, the fishing village of Marsaxlokk opens the season with a centuries-old blessing of the fleet. It’s a rare case of a fish’s regional name being inseparable from an entire cultural calendar.

Why English Ended Up With Two Competing Names

English is unusual in having two names in active use at once: the older dolphinfish and the now-dominant mahi mahi. The full story behind that switch, and the confusion that caused it, is its own article.