Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Page 38

Postscript to
The Faroese Bird Names
W. B. Lockwood
Dunna
In an article »KeItisk Indflydelse paa Færøerne« in
Tingakrossur 1—2, 1902, Jakob Jakobsen drew attention to
the similarity between Far. dunna ‘domestic duck’ and Sc.
Gael. tunnag ‘do’, and concluded that the Faroese word
was a borrowing from Gaelic. This explanation was, how>
ever, not generally accepted, other scholars preferring a
Germanic etymology which saw a cognate in oe, olg dun(n)
‘dun’. In The Faroese Bird Names, 1961, pp. 12—14, I was
able, on the basis of further evidence, to vindicate Jakob*
seri’s view and demonstrate that his explanation is, in
essentials, the correct one. Meanwhile, in a contribution
to the forthcoming volume of Zeitschrift fiir vergleichende
Sprachforschung, the philology of oe, olg dun(n) will be
found treated in detail; there is no doubt that this adjec=
tive has nothing whatever to do with Far. dunna.
A little more may be said about the position of Sc. Gael.
tunnag. It is diminutive in form and cognate with Northern
Ir. tonnóg, seen from H. Wagner, Linguistic Atlas and
Survey of Irish Dialects, 1958, p. 48, to have been an East
Ulster word, or at any rate to have survived there, for
everywhere else in Ireland only lacha has been recorded.