ENGLISH NAMES OF AMERICAN BIRDS—TROTTER. 507 
world, occurs in the Vomina Avium of an English vocabulary of the 
fifteenth century, where the name appears as “ robynet redbreast,” 
literally “ little robin redbreast.” Our American robin was known to 
the early southern colonists as the “ fieldfare,”’ and is so termed by 
Catesby (“The Fieldfare of Carolina,” vol. 1, 29). The bird has 
many of the qualities of the fieldfare, and, like its British congener, 
came from the north in autumn, scattering over the cleared lands in 
loose flocks. William Bartram (Travels, 290) speaks of it as the 
“ fieldfare or robin redbreast,” and Kalm mentions it under the latter 
name (English Trans., II, 90). Our familiar name “ robin ” is thus 
a contraction of the “ robin redbreast ” of old English speech. 
In the Vomina Avium of Ailfric the cuckoo occurs as “ geac.” In 
some provincial dialects it is still called a “ gowk,” a survival of the 
httle-altered Anglo-Saxon name. ‘“ Cuckoo” or “ cuckow ” (the latter 
an earlier form of the name and given as such by Catesby) is un- 
doubtedly derived through later Norman speech (French coucoi; 
Italian cucco or cuculo; old English cuccu). The German name 
kuckuk or koekoek, the Danish kukker or gj6g, and the Swedish gék 
are clearly allied to the Anglo-Saxon geac or gowk, all being un- 
doubted variants expressive of the bird’s voice, and the same is true 
of “ cuckoo” and its variants.¢ The colonists were not deceived in 
giving to the American species its rightful name, though Catesby may 
have been the first to bestow it. 
“Crow ” appears in Atlfric’s vocabulary as crawe,; “kite” as glida 
and glede, the last name continuing down to the fifteenth century. 
The Anglo-Saxon staern or staer (later stare) has become the modern 
“ starling.” 
A manuscript in the Royal Library at Brussels, of eleventh century 
date, contains a number of bird names, among which are the gos- 
hafoe (literally “ goose hawk”) modernized to “ goshawk,” and 
spear-hafoe (“sparrow hawk”). It seems curious that our little 
American sparrow hawk has not borne the name of its near relative, 
the kestral, rather than that of the quite different sparrow hawk of 
the Old World. “ Turtle” was an old name for the dove and appears 
as such in Catesby (“The Turtle of Carolina,” I, 24). It originated, 
as Skeat observes, from an effort to express the cooing note and is 
altogether different from the word used to designate the reptile of 
the same name. This last was rendered by English sailors into 
“turtle ” from the Spanish tortuga. 
Wren, sparrow, and swallow appear in these old vocabularies as 
wraenna, spearwa, and swealewe. The first of these names Skeat 
asserts is derived from a base wrin, to squeal, chirp, or whine, in 
allusion to the bird’s voice. A curious old belief existed among the 
@To call a man a “gawk” (simpleton) appears equivalent to calling him a 
“euckoo,” a term of no uncertain meaning in the old days. 
