Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1976, Qupperneq 70

78
Faroese Bird-Name Origins (VI)
ordbok, etc. With such limited information about the present
name, one can only guess at the motivation, but if the primary
sense is ‘chick’, then the appearance will most likely have been
responsible. For the Faroese form (with á), cf. válka ‘rummage
in filth’ (ON valka).
Next, variants of two etymologically obscure items already
known. First: skurur, a local variant of skuri ‘immature gull’.
The new form confirms the impression that skuri is ultimately
the same word as Norw. skur ‘Spurv, eller Fugl som ligner
Spurv’ (Aasen) and distinct from skári (preserved in Svabo’s
svartbaksskári) which it eventually replaced. We imagine deve-
lopments to have been as follows. The Faroese cognate of
Norw. skur, whether *skur or skurur, at one time denoted the
gull chick, but subsequent confusion with the traditional name
skári led to the present compromise form skuri ‘immature gull’.
A postulated earlier sense ‘chick’ also removes any appreciable
problem in connecting the Norwegian and Faroese names
semantically, and agrees reasonably with the first Faroese
attestation in Resen’s ‘Skuren, en lille graae Fugl’. See FBN,
48. Possibly, too, a reminiscence of the meaning ‘chick’ sur-
vives in the newly reported skurapisa ‘gull chick’, which has
every appearance of being tautological. Second: -steppa, -stiffa,
variants of -stebba, -steffa in álku-, lomvigastebba, -steffa
‘razorbill, guillemot’ in its first year (FBN, 24). Though the
etymology continues to elude us, the forms appear to belong
to the category of expressive words.
Names posing no etymological problems are alifuglur ‘tame
bird’ (as hen, duck), cf. alipisa ‘chick of seabird raised by hand’
(FBN, 86). Next, bakfuglur lit. ‘back bird’, a collective term
for brooding guiilemots. Mr Poulsen kindly informs us that
this name has been reported from places so far apart as Gjógv
and Fivalba, and from the latter comes the explanation that
bak- alludes to the fact that the brooding birds sit on the
ledges with their dark-coloured backs away from the rock face,
in contrast to the non-breeders, which sit the other way round
and show their white breasts. Further, flekkusúla lit. ‘spotted