Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Qupperneq 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.