Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1971, Page 116

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Faroese Bird Name Origins
motivated by the bird’s call. We are not surprised that the
fulmar’s voice could give rise to a name, for synonymous Far.
náti, also náta, must surely be echoic. Nor is this the only
time that a bird’s cry has been likened to a horse’s voice, as
local Far. gneggjus ‘common gull’ from gneggja ‘neigh, whinny’
conveniently illustrates.
Likka ‘lesser blaok-baoked gull’
As stated in FBN, 45, the onomatopoeic origin of this
uniquely Faroese name cannot be in doubt. It would have
been appropriate, however, to have adduced parallels from
other languages to illustrate that the gull’s ory could lead to
a name of this shape. In this connection we may notice Finnish
lokki, the generic term for ‘gull’, with variants in certain other
languages of this family. As to the general onomatopoeic back-
ground, one could compare Icel. hlakka ‘scream (of eagles)’,
a term known since medieval times.
Meyrus ‘great skua’
This mysterious name is known only from Mohr’s Dictio-
nary, see now J. C. Svabo, Dict. Fær., i, 544 (“Mejnus”), where
it is quoted from a proverbial saying: tað ið hann gevur, má
meyrus tiggja, and noted as meaning ‘great skua’. It is, of
course, likely that the term comes from SuSuroy.
The Faroese noun ending -us has clearly been abstracted
from Danish examples such as Rasmus, whence the purely
Faroese Hanus, Janus. From such proper names, the ending
has occasionally been used to create ordinary appellatives, thus
gánus ‘foøl’ from gána ‘gape’, and the local bird names
gneggjus ‘common gull’, pippus ‘quail’ from gneggja ‘neigh,
whinny’, pippa ‘chirp’. If meyrus belongs to this latter cate-
gory, it will derive from a verb ''meyra. Such a verb has not
been recorded, but we note a widely attested, etymol'Ogically
identical, Norw. maura with the meaninigs ‘arbeide flittig,
være i stadig bevægelse; myldre; klø, krille’, and having a
parallel in Shetland Norn mor ‘krille, pirke, smaaverke’ (Torp,