David Strike wrote:

> Sharks being scavengers, a burial at sea was like a food-drop:  And
> because they took care of the recently deceased, they were referred
> to as "Nurses", "Grey Nurses" because of their colouring!  :-)

This seems unlikely for the shark we call a Nurse locally and in the
Caribbean primarily because it is a near shore species, unlikely to be
present in areas where sea burials are likely.  This, of course, does not
suggest Strike is wrong about sharks in his area.  While I've found
references to a nurse shark in Australia very smilar to what I'm used to,
I've also found references to Sand Tiger sharks which are far from similar.
For all I know, the shark he is referring to may be a pelagic species that
got named just he suggests.

Here are some other possibilities a bit of research showed up.  This is a
direct quote, not my words.

Lee
--------------------
The origin of the name "Nurse Shark" is obscure. But, as is often the case
with etymological research, a bit of time invested in poking through old
books can reveal some fascinating insights into the history of contemporary
words we use so casually we often take them for granted. Such is the case
with the question at hand.

According to Lineaweaver and Backus' excellent - though dated - book The
Natural History of Sharks (originally published by Lippincott in 1970, but
still available in paperback through Nick Lyons Books, New York):

"Possibly, some bygone observer watched a shark giving birth to live young
and thought the shark was giving nurse. Possibly the use of the word sprang
from the old notion that a shark would protect its young by taking them into
its mouth."

The first of these speculations seems more likely than the second, as the
species in question (Ginglymostoma cirratum) is ovoviviparous, giving birth
to live young that squirm forth from the cloaca. Although many species of
bony fishes (from freshwater cichlids to saltwater catfishes and
cardinalfishes) incubate or protect their eggs by taking them into the
mouth, this behavior has not been reported from any elasmobranch and - given
the relatively protracted gestation period of elasmo eggs - is not expected
to occur.

"But the Oxford English Dictionary points to another possibility. In
medieval times the n of an was frequently transferred to a following word
that began with a vowel. Huss, husse and hurse were long-ago names for
dogfish and other sharks as well. Nurse survives and so does huss"

Lineaweaver and Backus preface their case with quotations from 16th and 17th
century natural history books, providing examples of use of the words "nuse"
and "nurse-fish" for what we now call a Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) in
a way entirely consistent with the above hypothesis (see pages 142-3). When
early European explorers and naturalists ventured to distant lands and saw
species new to them, they often wrote of these unfamiliar creatures in terms
of those they knew from their homeland. Hence, we have Australian 'salmon'
and 'mynah birds' that are not closely related to their antipodean
counterparts. Thus, the "nurse" part of G. cirratum's vernacular name may be
a holdover from an Old English word first applied to this New World species
hundreds of years ago.