what are the origins of the word 'butterfly'?

Answer 1

From the link provided below...

"[Q] From David Powell: “Could the word butterfly, which has no obvious connection with butter (outside of its name), possibly be an ancient corruption of flutter by, which is exactly what the creature does? I can imagine a child mispronouncing it thusly and the result sticking in our language.”

[A] This has been suggested as a possible source of the name—the inversion is terribly seductive. There’s a big problem, though. J B S Haldane once spoke sadly of “a beautiful theory, slain by an ugly fact” and I’m about to tread all over the idea with my size nine clodhoppers of evidence. The word can be traced right back to the Old English buterflege, found in a glossary of about the year 700. Nowhere along its trip from those times to today does it ever appear in the inverted form. The word does indeed seem to be butter plus fly. Words in some other European languages also contain the same idea, such as the German Schmetterling, whose ultimate root is a Czech word for cream.
Why butter? We wish we knew for sure. Some authorities suggest the link comes from the insect’s yellow faeces. Others point to the old belief that butterflies like to land on milk or butter left uncovered, or even that fairies and witches took on the form of butterflies at night to steal butter from the dairy. Nice stories, but lacking rather a lot on the firm-evidence front.
Stephen Potter pointed out in his book Pedigree: Words From Nature that the most common British butterflies around habitations, such as the small white and cabbage white, are cream or pale yellow in colour, the usual colour of butter in the days before manufacturers started to add dyes to it. This would be my first choice for an explanation, too, so making a butterfly a butter-coloured flying thing."

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Answer 2

This is a cute question, but it may actually have an answer. 1) It may have originally been called a flutterby and through time transferred to butterfly (like Pennsylvania Deutsch to Pennsyvania Dutch); 2) It's an old English word I learned in entymology but don't remember that means something like milk thief (they were once thought to drink milk).

Answer 3

Is a butterfly named for the color of its excrement or because it was thought to steal butter? It is hard to imagine that anyone ever noticed the color of butterfly excrement or believed the insect capable of such theft. The first suggestion rests on the fact that an early Dutch name for the butterfly was boterschijte. The second is based on an old belief that the butterfly was really a larcenous witch in disguise.

Answer 4

It was originally "flutterby" which makes more sense as it literally means, to flutter by. Over the years it became spoonerised, and turned into Butterfly.

Answer 5

The first butterflies were made by churning milk and old airplane parts.