Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1971, Page 117

Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1971, Page 117
Faroese Bird Name Origins 125 Nynorsk etym. ordbok). Such occurrences make it highly likely that this verb was at one time fcnown in the Faroes, too. The skua is a ‘robber gull’, relentlessly pursuing and buffe- ting other species, so compelling them to disgorge. Skua names may be based upon this habit, as Sc. Gael. fdsgadair lit. ‘squeezer, presser’ or Eng. dial. teaser. We now notioe parti- cularly the meanings ‘klø, pirke’ (above), i. e. ‘prick, prod’, attested in Norwegian and Norn, and observe that they mosst aptly desoribe the skua’s hunting behaviour, so that ‘pricker, prodder’ would be a thoroughly appropriate designation for this bird. We therefore surmise that such is, in fact, the literal sense of Far. meyrus, presupposing a lost *meyra ‘prick, prod’. But perhaps it is not entirely lost. Sinoe nouns in -us are of rather reoent origin, there is just a chance that the verb in question still survives in local use. In this respect, we seem to have the sarne situation as with glibbari (above). Nakkalanga ‘razorbill’ The name nakkalanga was notioed in FBN, 59, and duly compared with nakkalangur ‘ashamed, shamefaced’. The latter is easily explained as a figurative use of an original meaning ‘long-naped’, the long nape resulting from holding one’s head in shame. But the bird name remained problematic, neither the secondary ‘ashamed, etc.’ nor the primary ‘long-naped’ making any recognised sense. However, I failed to consider the ornithological evidence sufficiently. I-t is true that, anatomicaldy speaking, the razorbill’s nape is not what could be called long. The name, however, derives from a posture of these birds: “They sit on their tarsi, with the body vertical and held high.... They preen themselves, shake the water off their plumage, keep turning their heads from side to side, point their bills into the air. ...” (D. A. Bannerman, The Birds of the British Isles, vii, 76f.). Thus the bird name, properily álka nakkalanga, is the only attestation of the literal meaning of the adjective nakkalangur, a term apparently confined to Faroese. However, it turns out to have
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