Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Side 21

Faroese Bird-Name Origins
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5pógvi in Fuglabókin (1951). Since it is now known that
Faroese did in fact possess a traditional name for the godwit
in the shape of jaðrakona, maintaining itself as such until the
second half of the 18th century, during which it came to mean
‘water rail’ (see previous section), the loan word koparsnípa
will most likely only have come into use after the native name
of the godwit had been transferred to the water rail.
Kvørkveggja, etc. ‘blackbird’
This purely Faroese name occurs in two main types: kvør-
kveggja (kver-), -kvikkja, to which add a further variant
-kvekkja (Jacobsen-Matras, op. cit.), f., and kvørkviski (kver-)
n., the latter also having the sense ‘shy, retiring person’ —
we ignore here the unverified kvørkvisla said to have been
used in Nólsoy (FBN, 50 f.). In our previous work, we were
unable to propose etymologies here; this omission we now hope
to make good, at least in part.
The Common Scandinavian name for the blackbird is re-
presented by ON súsvqrt lit. ‘very black one’; it is continued
in Norw. susvorta, and corruptly in Dan. solsort, Swed. dial.
solsvdrta (Falk-Torp, Norw.-ddn. etym. Wb.). Uniquely pre-
serving the old emphatic particle sú- (De Vries, op. cit.), the
name is clearly of considerable antiquity. The species is thus
named after the all-black plumage of the male, as in so many
other languages: suffice it to mention Ger. Schwarzdrossel or
Russ. tshornyi drozd lit. ‘black thrush’, or Eng. blackbird pa-
ralleled in Welsh aderyn du (du ‘black’), and even tautologi-
cally, as Ger. Schwarzamsel, Ir. londubh, beside the synony-
mous simplexes Amsel, lon ‘blackbird’.
In Faroese, however, this traditional name has been lost,
đue we suppose to the bird’s being a relatively rare visitor to
the islands and consequently not well known. Its present name
kvørkveggja, etc., will thus be a Faroese innovation, and we
ask: how can such a neologism have arisen? If the name has
a meaning, it can be expected to contain a word meaning
‘black’, as Icel. svartprostur lit. ‘black thrush’. As this is not