Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Síða 176

184
Faroese Bird-Name Origins
to an extraordinary degree, determined by linguistic taboo.
It must have been very oíten changed, since wherever the
bird is well known, as in Faroe or the islands off the north
and west coasts of Britain, the local dialects preserve a re-
markable number of different names, e.g. in Faroese also
drunnhvíti, bukari, livji, vendingarfuglur, bárufjarta and
associated forms. It would follow that the modern terms
are likely to be of relatively recent origin, older names having
been lost in the continual process of tabooing. We incline to
think that a medieval form would probably not survive in
purely oral tradition. Since haftyrðill certainly existed in the
Middle Ages, we are therefore led to suppose that it did not
have the sense ‘stormy petrel’, but meant ‘little auk’ just as it
still does in Icelandic. We suggest that the name will have
survived for long in the Faroes in this sense, too, and this
helped to preserve it into more modern times. Meanwhile,
however, a new, uniquely Faroese, name for this bird ful-
kobbi had come into existence and spread at the expense of
the older term. The traditional name managed to escape
complete eclipse, but only because, in some localities (Vágar
and Mykines), it was transferred to that other diminutive
ocean-wanderer, the stormy petrel. Svabo’s “hattiril” is evi-
dence for the present pronunciation two hundred years ago.
But it was doubtless already old then and the literal meaning
of the name quite forgotten. Conceivably, some feeling for
the significance of the first element remained, but the second
element could only have been understood as tyril ‘whisk’
(<ON pyrill), the simplex "'tyrðil not surviving in Faroese.
Such factors may have played at least a passive role in the
secondary attachment of the auk’s name to the petrel.
Lastly, the ornithological evidence. The little auk is a bird
of the far north, moving south of the arctic circle only in
winter. It is then abundant in Icelandic waters, but less so off
Faroe. Where a species is particularly prominent, one would
not expect it, or its name, to be confused with another.
Conversely, the stormy petrel, common in Faroe, is rarer in