It's important to remember that electricity has been around for as long as lightning and static, and that the electric eel was known long before Europeans named it in the 1700's. They're actually native to the Amazon and Orinoco river basins, as are several tribes of people - and seeing as there are a lot of Amazonian languages, the name would likely be whatever the natives in South America called it. There are also other electric fish, such as those that live in the Nile River - which were first depicted in an Ancient Egyptian slab from 3100 BCE, and was called 'angry catfish'. The Mediterranean and European coast of the Atlantic also contains electric fish, the electric ray, which were known as a 'torpedo' - dating back to the Ancient Romans from the Latin word for 'paralyzed' or 'numb'.

Back to the Europeans however, the discovery of the electric eel (which isn't actually an eel, it's a knifefish) came around exactly when the electrical science craze was hitting the world in the 1700's. It was named by Linnaeus, Electrophorus Electricus, in 1766 - long after electricity was discovered. To put it in context, the word "Electricity" comes from the Greek word elektron, meaning "amber". If you rub amber, it attracts dust due to a static charge. This phenomenon was named "electricus" by scientist William Gilbert in 1600. The static generator was then invented in 1650, the capacitor in 1744, and the "battery" in 1748 - with Ben Franklin's lightning and kite experiment being carried out in the 1750's. So it is likely that most people had an awareness of electricity, if they were aware of the eel.

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