Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1975, Page 21

Faroese Bird-Name Origins
29
one. It has been strong enough to attract loan words, e. g.
mynstur ‘pattern’, portur cgate’, sukur ‘sugar’, and has other-
wise been occasionally productive, cf. blomstur ‘flower’ (ON
blómstr m., Norw. blomster n.), foreldur pl. ‘parents’ (ON
foreldri), furthur spjaldur ‘(wooden) tag; small halibut’ (ON
spjald) and most interestingly, as Jóhan Hendrik W. Poulsen
has kindly pointed out to us, tjaldur ‘curtain; tent’ in ballad
style beside original tjald, see now Føroysk-donsk orðabók2,
Eykabind, 1974. One will see here the influence of analogy
on the bird name, paving the way for the change of gender.
Even so, considerable pressure must have been required to
effect such a change, for the shift to the neuter gender is un-
precedented in the sphere of bird names, where neuters are in
any case very exceptional. From what is known of the wide-
spread practice of name taboo one may perhaps ask if this
is not an example of deliberate deformation as an evasive
device, comparable in principle to, say, Eng. mother Carey’s
chicken for (unrecorded) mother Mary’s chicken.
At this point we return to ON tjaldr, now confident that -r
is indeed purely the nom. sg. ending, and from this form we
may, of course, postulate ancestral Prirn. Germ. *telða-. This
word we shall attempt to explain, first seeking guidance from
comparative nomenclature. A survey of European oyster-
catcher names indicates that these fall into three main cate-
gories, the bird being called after its
1) feeding habits, real or imaginary: Far. rúðurbori, Eng.
oyster-catcher,
2) appearance: Far. hitt nevreyða, Irish riabhán or roilleach
lit. ‘striped’, and often compared to the magpie, as Dan. strand-
skade,
3) various calls — there is a fair repertoire: Far. klipp,
Welsh pib also meaningful ‘pipe’, Dutch liev, Sc. Gael. trille-
achan lit. ‘triller’.
We would add that nowhere have we encountered an in-
stance of the bird being named after its gait. The commonly
supposed connection of ON tjaidr with such verbs as Norw.