Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Side 16

Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Side 16
24 Faroese Bird-Name Origins mation presented in the above studies, and this in turn permits further conclusions, as follows. First of all, the meaning of ON jaðrakárn is no longer in doubt; it must have been ‘godwit’. It will be next of interest to learn how and why the meaning in Faroese could change from ‘godwit’ to ‘water rail’. As we see it, the reason must have been basically linguistic. In Resen’s day the name was pronounced /jaSrakona/, by Svabo’s time it had become /jeara- kona/. The sound shift began when, let us say c. 1700, /S/ became silent and the ensuing /jara-/ was at once necessarily modified to /jeara-/ in accordance with the phonological pat- tern of the language, hence Svabo’s ‘phonetic’ spelling. But this new pronunciation at once gave the first element a new meaning, since /jeara-/ is ‘earth’, so that the name was hence- forth automatically understood as ‘earth-woman’. The godwit is not a common Faroese bird, many speakers at the time would then have no clear ideas about it and the name, in its new shape, was transferred to the water rail, not a common species either, and secretive into the bargain, but one whose habits seem to be reflected in a name like ‘earth-woman’ — the bird, rarely observed on the wing, flees from human intrusion by swiftly running away, its body held close to the ground (FBN, 24). There is no record of an older, more ori- ginal Faroese name for the water rail. Still we might guess, though no more than guess, that it could have been the same as synonymous Icel. jarðsmuga, the first element jarð- ‘earth’ then being a predisposing factor in the adoption of the godwit name. The Icelandic name certainly appears to be ancient, since the second element is traditional in bird names, cf. Swed. gárdsmyg ‘wren’ (Heliquist, Svensk etym. Ordbok) or Ger. Grasmiicke ‘Sylvia’, OHGer. grasemucca presupposing *grasas- mukka (Kluge, Deut. etym. Wb.). But however this may have been, the semantic shift in question has thus been essentially brought about by phonetic changes occurring as part of the normal evoiution of the language, an odd coincidence which, to the best of our knowledge, is quite unique in the history of bird names.
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