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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is still not relevant to the matter in hand but, since you raise the point, where do you get this erne = English theory from? The one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that people living in Britain would have a word for this extremely conspicuous bird (or birds). Unless they lived in Sesame Street and just called them all Big Birds.
One would think there would be an Indo-European root word but it seems not. So aigle or ørn? General THOBR principles would plump for aigle but I suppose if we are truly Anglo-Saxons then it would presumably be ørn. (I assume the line means it is pronounced 'earn'.) Since both orns and eagles are of mild Megalithic interest, a cautious foray down Etymology Lane might be in order. Keep a sharp lookout for dialect ernes (good) and OED vapourings about Old Norse, Middle High German, Modern Danish etc (bad).
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Gullic Wars....
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Tern (t'ern)
From a Scandinavian language, related to Danish and Norwegian terne, Swedish tärna, ultimately from Old Norse þerna
Noun
tern (plural terns)
Any of various sea birds of the family Sternidae that are similar to gulls but are smaller and have a forked tail |
Arctic terns are a nuisance on the Farne Islands from a tourist's point of view. They hold the record, I think, for the greatest distances covered by a migrating bird.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Whoah woah woah! What a gold mine of ideas here!
Eagle = Angle! I like it! Tern = Turn!!!
In my next book I will be proposing a theory that boats crossing the Atlantic turned to follow the paths of migrating birds to find key ports. Those birds had been trained by human beings to follow navigation markers and their pathways are the origins of lines of Longitude.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Your next book! We're still waiting for your previous five.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I like the way Hats slyly gets in Tea Urn
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Your next book! We're still waiting for your previous five. |
Me too. That's why I've decided radical measures are necessary.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We're still waiting for your last five radical measures.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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By chance BBC Radio 4 did an interview with the naturalist Stephen Moss who's appearing at the Hay Festival to talk about his new book on bird names.
One or two, such as swan and swallow, elude him but he says the majority have Anglo-Saxon names. Indeed 'bird' itself is apparently an Anglo-Saxon word
| ...until the late medieval period, birds were not called “birds†at all, but fowls – as in Chaucer’s poem The Parliament of Fowls. The word bird (originally the Anglo-Saxon brid), referred only to young fowls, or chicks. Then, sometime around the time Chaucer was writing, this meaning began to shift. From then on, although “fowl†was still used for larger birds such as members of the crow family, “bird†became the norm for all smaller birds, including the blackbird. |
Fowl presumably is related to 'fly'. No-one actually knows the origin of bird (I guess there could be a connection with French voler, Latin volare).
For some reason native bird names got so mangled that people forgot what they were originally and changed them to make more sense
| Thus, the Anglo-Saxon “yellow ammer†(from the German word for a bunting) became yellowhammer; “red steort†(meaning red tail) turned into redstart; and “wheteres†– literally white arse, changed into wheatear. Norman French also had a major influence on the names of ducks (mallard and wigeon), game birds (pheasant and partridge), and raptors (peregrine and hobby). |
We seem to be pretty useless at keeping hold of bird words (but there are exceptions, like woodpecker, blackbird, jackdaw etc.)
| What these all have in common is that they were important to the Norman nobility – either as food, or for hunting and sport – so their French names took precedence over the older, English ones. Hobby, for example, comes from the Old French verb hober – meaning to jump about – and refers to this falcon’s dashing, acrobatic flight. |
The hobby is possibly the only bird in the world fast enough and agile enough to catch dragonflies. It is not renowned for jumping about.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Ooh, you are awful. To Stephen Moss.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Perhaps I can be more awful.
| One or two, such as swan and swallow, elude him but he says the majority have Anglo-Saxon names. |
This cannot be right. Since we speak Anglo-Saxon (or so Stephen Moss believes) it follows that all bird names will be Anglo-Saxon apart from ‘borrowings’. Obviously, one lot of borrowings will be birds they (I mean ‘we’) found in new places and that therefore we wouldn’t have a name for but which would have a local name. ‘New places’ according to Stephen Moss would include Britain but I don’t know that there are that many birds that occur in Britain but not in the Anglo-Saxon homeland, wherever that was. Still such a list would certainly provide an excellent sample to test Stevo’s theory out since, according to him, these birds would have ‘Celtic’ names. My Celtic is too rusty to be of assistance here.
A better test case would surely be North America which the Anglo-Saxons later settled and which abounds with birds that do not occur in the Anglo-Saxon homeland (which by then included Britain). Here’s the first bunch I came across
White-breasted Nuthatch
House Finch
American Robin
Brown-headed Cowbird
Tree Sparrow
Tufted Titmouse
House Sparrow
European Starling
American Goldfinch
Carolina Wren
Common Grackle
Northern Mockingbird
It doesn’t look as though Anglo-Saxons by nature are big borrowers from the natives re native birds. But what about non-natives birds from non-natives? More later when I have brushed up on this new hobby. And improved my pun-work.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Hatty wrote: |
Fowl presumably is related to 'fly'. No-one actually knows the origin of bird (I guess there could be a connection with French voler, Latin volare).
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It is related to owl, howl, etc. Maybe a barn owl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwG15rXTdCI
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| ...until the late medieval period, birds were not called “birds†at all, but fowls – as in Chaucer’s poem The Parliament of Fowls. The word bird (originally the Anglo-Saxon brid), referred only to young fowls, or chicks. Then, sometime around the time Chaucer was writing, this meaning began to shift. From then on, although “fowl†was still used for larger birds such as members of the crow family, “bird†became the norm for all smaller birds, including the blackbird. |
This is just straightforward tosh. Since there are virtually no English texts before the ‘late medieval period’ we do not know enough to make such a claim. I don’t know what a 'brid' is nor do I know why such a familiar thing as a bird would be a mispronounced brid nor, in an agrarian economy, why such a vital thing as the difference between chicks and adult birds would be so thoroughly confused and conflated. But since Chaucer seems to be the authority on the matter let us hear whether he knew the difference
On every bough I heard the birds sing
Angelic voices in their harmony;
Some their fledglings forth did bring;
And little rabbits to their play went by.
And further all about I did espy
The fearful roe, the buck, the hart, the hind,
Squirrels, and small beasts of noble kind.
How thoroughly modern of him.
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