Pig Merchant

[behindthefrogs]

You may think its obvious but it may not be.  It can also mean a hawker who sells pottery

[Christopher]

Hiya behindthefrogs,

I couldn't much sense in the reason for a person who sells pottery being known as a pig merchant. I looked at a website called shadowsoftime.co.nz which contains definitions and discovered a pigmaker is a person who made "pig-iron" or a pottery worker and pigman is a crockery seller, or a pig breeder or farmer.

I also looked at a page on the BBC News website where, in an article by Ian Youngs, I learnt about Pottery Lane, which is one of west London's most picturesque and desirable streets.  In his article Ian states that Pottery Lane today belies little of the horror and squalor that once infested the area which used to be known as the Piggeries and Potteries.

I wonder if the terms pig merchant and pigman are related to Piggeries and Potteries which may have been found in the same location in many instances? 

Christopher

[Berlin-Bob]

You may think its obvious but ....

I think the important point here  - and this is probably why Behindthefrogs mentions it - is that 'pig' can have many meanings.

'Merchant' usually means someone selling or dealing in something, and as we now see,

'pig' can just mean an animal,

or a pig of iron, as in pig iron:

Pig iron is raw iron, the immediate product of smelting iron ore with coke and limestone in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a very high carbon content,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron

or a pig of crockery, as in

Pigman Crockery dealer

http://home.clara.net/tirbach/hicks3a.html#Occupations

One of those jobs where we need to know more than just the words 'pig merchant'