Does the word for squid (ika) come from another language?


My book lists a number of kinds of fishes and sea creatures.

The names are given in hiragana for all except that for squid for which it is
given in katakana. イカ

Does the word _ika_ come from another language and if so what language ?




### Does the word for squid ( _ika_ ) come from another language?

Adding on to kimi Tanaka's answer, I see in [the 日本国語大辞典 entry
here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%83%8F%E8%B3%8A-430852#E7.B2.BE.E9.81.B8.E7.89.88.20.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.9B.BD.E8.AA.9E.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E5.85.B8)
that the word _ika_ appeared in the 播【はり】磨【ま】風【ふ】土【ど】記【き】 of 715. There aren't
many long-form Japanese texts older than this, so we can say with some
certainty that, if this were a borrowing, it would have been borrowed during
the [Old Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Japanese) or [Proto-
Japonic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages#Proto-language)
stages of the language.

### Why is _ika_ written in katakana?

This question arises from your comments.

There are various terms that are written in katakana despite being native-
Japanese terms. Another example is アリ ("ant"). Years ago when on a university
homestay in Japan, a friend of mine was asked by her hostbrother what English
word アリ came from. He was convinced that it was a borrowing, since it was
written in katakana so often. However, it's a native-Japanese term -- it's
only written in kana because the kanji is unusual and hard to remember, and it
inconveniently has a lot of strokes: 蟻.

I suspect that 烏賊 might be written as イカ for similar reasons.

