Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Page 181

Faroese Bird-Name Origáns
189
All etymological dictionaries uncritically follow an ex-
planation given by A. Noreen, NTfFil., nr. 4, 37, according to
which the name is formed from a Germanic verb meaning cto
speed’, lost in North Germanic, but preserved in a secondary
sense in West Germanic, e. g. Old Eng. spowan ‘prosper’, the
primary meaning surviving in the derivative spæcT>‘speed’.
Numenius was thus the ‘speedy’ bird since it both flies and
runs rapidly.
It is pretty obvious that this is a bold conclusion in view
of the gaps in the philological evidence. There is no verb in
North Germanic and no parallel bird name in West Germanic.
But this is not all. In this analysis, philological acumen is
operating in a vacuum, ignoring the Realien, as a moment’s
reflexion shows. We do not disagree that both N. phæopus
and N. arquata fly quickly and could well be called good
runners. But we raise the obvious objection that the same and
more applies to many other species. Built-in speed in birds is
so much taken for granted that it rarely figures in the
nomenclature, and then only quite exceptional performers can
merit such distinction, e. g. Eng. swift. Elementary orni-
thological facts contradict outright any notion that the term
spói can have anything to do with speed.
When faced with a problematic bird name of this sort, it
may be useful to consider whether etymoligisable names in
other languages afford a clue. We shall soon see that a brief
review of commoner names given in English will suffice. In
English, the two species are distinguished in our examples by
basically different names. N. phæopus is whimbrel, locally
also titterel, while N. arquata is curlew, in the north often
called whaup. The first pair contain imitative whim and titt
with typical -(e)rel suffix as in cockerel, etc., the former with
epenthetic b, as in chamber ultimately from Lat. camera. The
name curlew is borrowed from French courlieu, a word with
many variants as befits a name of onomatopoeic origin; the
standard form is courlis. The mainly Scottish whaup pre-
supposes older ''whalp (cf. auk from ON alk-), to be closely