Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Side 179

Faroese Bird-Name Origins
187
cf. Far. fjall ‘mountain’, Norw. fjell, and it is noticeable that
Far. bárafjertur is the exact counterpart of Norw. baarafjært.
The facts seem best explained if the Faroese words are taken
as borrowings from Norwegian, variously assimilated to the
native morphological system.
Teisti ‘black guillemot’
The derivation of Far. teisti (as of Norw. teiste, Norn
táisti, etc.) from ON peisti, usual hitherto, has the advantage
of a certain formal economy. However, the current Icelandic
forms teista, peista, (very local) teisti, suggest that initial t
may be as old as initial p, so the Faroese (and other) forms
could equally well go back to ON '’rteisti.
This minor observation is of some relevance for the etymo-
logy. For Falk-Torp, Norw.-dán. etym. Wb., and Torp, Ny-
norsk etym. Ordbok, the name is of obscure origin, but Hell-
quist, Svensk etym. Ordbok, offers a tangible explanation:
tjest....et bohuslánskt dialektord, áven teste, tist....•, efter
det fina pipande láte ist, ist som faglen ofta utstoter i flykten;
naturtrognare atergivet i den skanska beteckningen iste.
We shall demonstrate below that Hellquist’s basis premise is
without doubt correct, though his statement of the case is not
free from misconception. It is patently unscientific to imply
that ist, ist is the correct representation of the bird’s cry, for
in the nature of the case an accurate phonetic analysis in terms
of human pronunciation is excluded. The Skane form is neither
better nor worse than peisti and the rest. We see, moreover,
that the argumentation in favour of an onomatopoeic origin
is actually confirmed by the alternation of Icel. t-/p- (above),
for the types peisti, teisti, iste, are clearly imitations of a
whistling sound. Indeed, they are substantially masculine agent
nouns with the literal meaning ‘whistler’, peista, etc., being
the corresponding feminine forms, cf. ON arfi ‘heir’, arfa
‘heiress’.
One can, it appears, also test the theory of onomatopoeic