Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1975, Qupperneq 17

Faroese Bird-Name Origins
25
nowadays used of the garganey, this is certainly a recent
development, due to literature, for the garganey is not a
Faroese bird in any real sense of the word. K. Williamson,
The Atlantic Islands, 319, reports the bird as a vagrant, only
twice recorded. Such a bird could never possess a genuinely
native name. Our present names, therefore, must belong to
some species prominent enough in the Faroes to have acquired
a Faroese name. We compile a list of these, following FBN,
9—12: ógvella ‘long-tailed duck’, æða ‘eider duck’, then those
compounded with ont ‘duck’, firstly the distinctive toppont
‘merganser’, then stokkont ‘mallard’, stikkont ‘pintail’, krik-
ont ‘teal’. It does not take long to make an identification.
From this list, the term ‘cripple duck’ is applicable only to
the teal, or more exactly to the male of the species which, in
protecting its young, draws attention from them to itself by
feigning injury. Svabo wrote (Indh., 16): »Kripils-ont forekom
mig ikke. Maaske kaldes Kriikonten saaledes af nogle.« We
are thus able to verify his supposition — two centuries later!
One may imagine how the misnomer arose. The teal and
garganey are the dwarfs among the ducks and so much alike,
especially the females, as to be often confused; in fact, the
two species may share the same name and are, of course, classed
together scientifically (Querquedula).
Roðbuksuskarvur ‘eider duck’
It may be of some interest to notice that this disrespectful
poacher’s term (FBN, 82) has a parallel in principle in Icel.
pokaónd lit. ‘duck in a sack’, a similarly evasive name arising
under identical conditions, see Blondal.
Stálkoka ‘crow’
This noa term from Fugloy is noted in FBN, 61, but no
final analysis was offered. We now think that stálkoka and
not a theoretically possible stoltkoka will be the correct form.
We may take ‘indvendig hulning bagest i ryggen pa et kreatur,
bækken’ (Jacobsen—Matras) at its face value, here used humor-
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