Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Qupperneq 22

Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Qupperneq 22
30 Faroese Bird-Name Origins so, we conclude that the name is not properly meaningful, in which case it will only be explicable in terms of onomatopoeia. We therefore identify kvørkveggja and its variants as onoma- topoeic representations of the shrill, screeching chatter of the startled blackbird. We notice that the gender is feminine and wonder if we may see in this a faint trace of the lost ON súsvgrt f. Turning next to the other type kvørkviski, one sees that this form contains a quite different second element, and further differs from kvørkveggja in being meaningful. The question arises: is its meaning 'shy, retiring person’ a figurative use of the bird name or is the opposite true? At this point we observe that kvørkviski is neuter, a gender which is most exceptional in primary bird names (Fróð., xxiii, 28 f.). On the other hand, compound formations of this nature denoting persons may well have this gender, as the common -menni, -vætti (Jacobsen- Matras, op. cit., 277, 511). Evidently then kvørkviski is not primarily a bird name at all, but how did it come to mean ‘blackbird’? The development must by due to folk etymology motivated, it would seem, by the blackbird’s shy and retiring behaviour in the Faroes. M. á Ryggi, op cit., 6, writes: (Kvør- kveggja.... er varugur fuglur, flýgur mest høgt fram yvir jørðini og dámar væl at fjala seg. Whereas we hope to have adequately explained the origin of kvørkveggja and its variants, we are not yet able to do as much for kvørkviski. But we can offer suggestions. The second element -kviski appears to be an extension of -kvisi, occurring in the variant kvørkvisi (Jacobsen-Matras, op. cit.) and paral- leled in Icel. orkvisi ‘degenerate person’, whence the Faroese adjectives ørkvisin ‘sensitive’ and kvørkvisin ‘shy, retiring’. Dare we guess that the latter may be no more than the former modified by contamination with the bird name kvørkveggja? Vípa ‘lapwing’ We considered the two etymologies long ago proposed for this term in FBN, 73 f., preferring that one which views it as
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