Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Side 23

Faroese Bird-Name Origins
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a purely onomatopoeic creation rather than as a word basi-
cally meaning ‘crest’. After further study of lapwing names in
a European context, we have come to believe that the meaning
‘crest’ must, after all, be primary. At the same time, the pho-
netic structure of the word eventually led to its being regarded
as reproducing the bird’s call. One has something of both
worlds, so to speak, as we now explain.
A characteristic feature about lapwing names of primary
onomatopoeic origin is their disyllabic pattern, as Eng. dial.
peeweet (whence literary peewit), peeweep, teeweet, teeweep,
with which compare Dutch kievit (dial. kiewit) beside Flem.
piewit, paralleled with slavicising -tz) in Ger. Kiebitz, dial.
Piewitz, and the same elsewhere, as Russ. tshibis, sometimes
made meaningful, as French dix-huit. These two-syllable words
reflect the penetrating alarm call.
Now the lapwing is as often named after its remarkable,
mobile crest. We have already referred to a Gaelic example,
i. e. Ir. adharcán lit. ‘little horn’ (first section above), compar-
able to many Welsh names based on corn ‘horn’, as corn y wich
‘wheezy horn’ or cornichyll with obscure second element, but
ancient as a corresponding form occurs in Bret. kernigell.
Further French vanneau lit. ‘crest’ or Eng. dial. hornpie, while
Eng. lapwing itself, earliest OEng. (Leiden Gl., late 8th cen-
tury) laepiwince, can be shown to be tautological, each element
ultimately meaning ‘crest’; a related simplex survives in North
Fris. liip ‘lapwing’ (W. B. L., Lapwing and associated Names,
Lransactions of the Philological Society, forthcoming).
We may now refer to the Scandinavian name. Falk-Torp,
op. cit., vibe, write. . . . ‘Der vogel hat wahrscheinlich seinen
namen nach dem federbusch auf dem kopfe, den er (wie einen
facher) legen oder heben kann: vgl. mnd. wip ‘quaste’. . . .’
De Vries, op. cit., vípa, compares in addition to MLGer. wíp
its synonymous cognates MDutch wijp, (older) wipe, OHGer.
wiffa, further Norw. vipa ‘steifes Haar, Granne’, the direct
descendant of ON vípa (attested as a sobriquet). In view of
the very high incidence of ‘crest’ names in lapwing nomen-