Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1971, Qupperneq 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