Atlantic salmon from the Latin "salmo", meaning salmon, and "salar", meaning leaper, according to M. Barton, but more likely meaning "resident of salt water" . Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879) translates "salar" as a kind of trout from its use in the "Idylls" of the poet Ausonius (4th century CE). Later, the differently coloured smolts were found to be the same species. Other names used to reference Atlantic salmon are: bay salmon, black salmon, caplin-scull salmon, Sebago salmon, silver salmon, fiddler, or outside salmon. At different points in their maturation and life cycle, they are known as parr,
Salmon the majority are anadromous and migrate to the ocean for maturation: in these species, smolts spend a portion of their out-migration time in brackish water, where their body chemistry becomes accustomed to osmoregulation in the ocean. The salmon spend about one to five years (depending on the species) in the open ocean, where they gradually become sexually mature. The adult salmon then return primarily to their natal streams to spawn. Atlantic salmon spend between one and four years at sea. When a fish returns after just one year's sea feeding, it is called a grilse in Canada, Britain, and Ireland.