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Some supermarket is going to rename pollock colin. Colin. Colin the pollock. Apparently, customers don’t like asking for pollock. They don’t like asking the fishmonger if he’s got any pollocks and could they see them? Apparently, they won’t mind asking him for a colin. Pollock already has another name — it’s called “Yeuch, couldn’t you get haddock?”. And more often, simply, catfood. The reason people don’t ask for pollock is because it’s an insipid, clammy fish, with a faint flavour of fertiliser and the texture of a wet telephone directory.

The naming of fish is a nightmare. They have more aliases than Maltese pimps. Can you tell the difference between a scampi, a langoustine, a Dublin Bay prawn or a Norwegian lobster? No, of course you can’t, because they’re all the same thing. Except in America, where scampi can mean an Italian prawn, even though Italian for prawn is gamba. And Americans call prawns shrimp. More than 150 varieties of fish are regularly called red snapper, and monkfish is also anglerfish, and occasionally a goosefish, and quite often mistaken for a grenadier fish, which is also called rat’s tail, though it’s difficult to tell, because none of them is ever sold with its head on. A dead shark is a dogfish, a huss or a rock salmon. In a tin, a pilchard is a pilchard. On the slab, it’s a Cornish sardine. Whelks are not worth eating.

So the dish formerly known as pollock is now colin. Except that colin is already another fish; it’s the French name for hake. Which in Ireland is often called fake, because it’s sold in chippies as cod. The Chilean sea bass is a Patagonian toothfish, and fish fingers aren’t. This business of renaming things to make them taste better or cost more makes me irrationally angry, which is another word for furious. Why should I care? The fish don’t care. They probably go through their whole lives thinking they’re called Derek the whale, before discovering at the last moment that, in fact, they’re colin the pollock.

Well, I mind, because taxonomy is important. Labels are important. The naming of things is important. It’s not just neat, it’s respectful. It places things in the world order; makes them members of the grand scheme of stuff. And it’s particularly chefs who play fast and loose with the monikers. They don’t even know the names of their dishwashers. Not bothering to learn someone's name shows you don’t really care. They don’t command any dignity. It’s like waking up on a first date and saying, “I’ve never slept with a Claudia before — I’m going to call you Tiffany.” Tiffany is a much classier one-night stand.

If things are given the dignity of a name, then you miss them when they’re gone. At the moment, we could and may well have extinguished a dozen species of red snapper, and still look at the one on our plates without guilt. The great cod banks off north America have been fished to desolation. In their place, we’ve renamed 18 other fish that are sold as cod, including arctic cod, Siberian cod, polar cod, rock cod, Murray cod, sleepy cod, trout cod, black cod, blue cod, and ling. All of them are understudies, impersonators, covering up piscicide.

The name cod itself probably derives from the old English word for a bag. As in codpiece. Cods for testicles, so they’re almost pollocks. The evacuation of the seas is the most pressingly cataclysmic global change facing us. We have no answer. Fish farming uses 3kg of fish meal to make 1kg of processed fish. So we shuffle the names. The great sunken kingdom of Poseidon swims into eternity, and we couldn’t even be bothered to get their names right. And if we’re going to rename stuff willy and nilly, why don’t we call supermarkets thick, greedy insincere fat buckets? Or call them rats?

This week’s restaurant is called the Salisbury. Presumably after the third Marquess of Salisbury, aka Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, sometimes also known as Viscount Cranborne and occasionally Big Boy Bunnykins. This foodie pub is set on a quiet corner off the Dawes Road in that swathe of Fulham that is a Pooterish reserve of Victorian artisans’ cottages, a semi-detached enclave to the skilled and nimble-fingered. Solid, bow-fronted probity that has now become the first homes of Hoorays and Sloane rangers — the starter kit for second sons of rural baronets and boys just out of the army, contemplating a life in claret or organising safaris. It’s a little spot of family values that’s been hit in the cods by recession. There are a lot of estate-agent signs up over estate agents’ houses, and boarded-up corner shops.

The streets are too quiet, with just the faint sound of fingernails sliding down mortgages. This is not a propitious time or place for the Salisbury.

The Blonde and I went at lunchtime, and took Jemima Khan and Susie Murphy, fresh and pink from their Milfs’ pilates class. The dining room is large and sunny with a glass roof, and looks modern, but is too happily corporate for my taste, a little like the cafeteria in a German youth hostel. But the menu is wonderful. It starts with English tapas: egg and crayfish mayonnaise, fingers of welsh rarebit, sweetbreads and foie gras on toast, corned-beef pasties with HP Sauce. All made fresh and perfectly conceived. You can have steak and chips; sausage and mash; or smoked chicken and waldorf salad. Again, exactly what you’d want in a smart pub in Fulham. There was a veal pie that you can take away, and the Blonde had for supper. She said it was good. Apparently so good there was none left when I got back. There’s rhubarb crumble, and cheesecake and brownies.

It’s food that takes the simple and nice things about English pubs and does them better than you'd expect, with a light good humour. I’d have loved it all the more if there’d been anyone else in the dining room. There was one businessman on his own, looking like he’d escaped from a Magritte painting. I’ve been eating in far too many empty rooms recently. I’m beginning to think it’s me. You always hope that recession will have a sense of good taste, fair play and nice manners. But, of course, it doesn’t. The prices here are reasonable; you could eat for a tenner, or you could eat for three tenners. The service was attentive and friendly, but then it would be. I do wish the Salisbury well. If fine intentions buttered carrots and sold pies, they’d be humming. The Marquess of Salisbury was also known as Bob. He was the original Bob from Bob’s your uncle. In true Fulham style, he made Arthur Balfour, his nephew, minister for Ireland, and later, Balfour made the declaration that renamed Palestine Israel.

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