I thought it was this way in English because the wealthy aristocrats (Norman invaders) spoke French, so they used the French words for the meat on their plates (beef, lamb, pork, etc) while the poor peasants who raised the animals called them by their Anglo-Saxon Germanic names (cow, sheep, pig, etc.)
I know that 'beef' is derived from the french word 'boef', but isn't lamb simply the juvenile form of a sheep?
I was under the impression that 'lamb' meat was from a juvenile sheep, and 'sheep meat' would be from an adult animal, or is 'lamb' the general term for sheep meat in english?
Mutton is the term for meat from a mature sheep, but it is rarely sold outside of halal and speciality butchers in the UK these days, which is a pity as it's better for stews.
Lamb is meat from a young sheep - raised to be eaten young.
Mutton is meat from an older sheep, generally from sheep no longer good for wool production, too old to bear lambs, etc.
Mutton is a relative rarity outside the farm gate in shops and city butchers .. in an economic sense as soon as a sheep is big enough and well fed enough to be sold on to super market chains, why invest further time in that animal?
Unless, of course, wool production and| lamb production (ie. older ewes and some rams).
Almost all of them. English doesn’t because the word for the animal is Germanic from Old English (pig, cow, sheep) and the word for the meat is from Norman French (pork from porc, beef from boeuf, mutton from mouton).
While this is the case for almost all animals and their meat in Japanese, oddly enough lamb meat is ラム肉 ramu-niku, where ramu is loaned from English "lamb". The animal is 羊 hitsuji, but while 羊肉 youniku is possible, you'd rarely if ever use that in speech (and I had to look up the onyomi reading!).
That said, lamb is quite rare in Japan, it's eaten primarily up north in Hokkaido.
