Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Page 15

Faroese Bird-Name Origins
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second element will have been: -kárnJ>1'~-korni>,','-kon whence
by folk etymology -kona ‘woman’. We return to the first
element below.
The article further considers the presumed Norw. jordkone
‘water rail’ and finds that this attestation is, in fact, most
dubious, being to all appearances an amendment to an untrust-
worthy Norw. Jordkenne quoted in F. Faber, Vber das Leben
der hochnordischen Vógel (1825), Anhang II. We had already
noted that the term was not recorded in the files of Nynorsk
Ordbok in Oslo, and may now confidently dismiss this word
with the observation that the name we are dealing with is
found only in Iceland and Faroe.
The second study of our word by J. Rischel and P. Skarup
on pp. 58 f. of their P. H. Resen: Atlas Danicus, Færøerne
(1972) makes it clear that Resen’s ‘Jadrekone’ (most likely
from the 1670’s) is a certain representation of a contemporary
Far. jaðrakona, and then shows that the meaning of the name
at this time was not ‘water rail’ as in the current language,
but unequivocally ‘godwit’ as in Icelandic. It is further shown
that, a hundred years later, Svabo (and Mohr) also understood
what was by then ‘jearakona’ (Indberetninger, Lex. Fær.) as
denoting the same species (see below), and that moreover this
sense survives in two present-day idioms which allude to the
long, thin legs of the godwit, namely jarða(r)konuleggir ‘tynde
og lange ben’ ( Jacobsen-Matras, Orðabók?) and ‘Beinini sum á
jarðarkonu’ — tá ein hevur óvanliga long bein (J. Chr. Poul-
sen, Føroysk orðafelli og orðtøk (1958), 11. It goes without
saying that ‘godwit’ will thus also be the meaning of the word
in the traditional Fuglakvæði. However, beginning with M. Th.
Briinnich, Ornithologia Borealis (1764), 58, ‘Jord-Koene’
appears as the Faroese name for the water rail, a meaning
reported by J. Landt in 1800 and by all other writers after
him. On this evidence, jaðrakona can be said to have changed
its meaning in the second half of the 18th century.
It is abundantly clear that our knowledge of the bird name
in question has been very greatly advanced by the new infor-