herring: [OE] Just as the hare is probably the ‘grey animal’, so the herring could well be the ‘grey fish’. Old English hǣring goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic *khēringgaz, in which the first syllable could represent the ancestor of English hoar ‘silvery-grey’ – the colour of the herring. French hareng comes from a variant of the West Germanic word. => hare, hoar
