V ° 1 1909 :VI ] Trotter, English Names of American Birds. 349 



century date, contains a number of bird names among which are 

 the Gos-hafoc (literally "Goose hawk") modernized to "Goshawk," 

 and Spear-hafoc ("Sparrow hawk"). It seems curious that our 

 little American Sparrow Hawk has not borne the name of its near 

 relative the Kestrel 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 Sivealewe. 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 folk of several European countries that the Wren was 

 the "King of Birds." Hence, probably the generic term Regulus 

 formerly applied to various species of Wren, and, likewise, its 

 English equivalent "Kinglet." "Sparrow" is literally a "flutterer" 

 (Spar, to quiver), and "Swallow" means a "tosser, or mover to 

 and fro; from its flight" (Skeat). "Lark" has been softened 

 down from the Old English "laverok" or "laverock" (Anglo- 

 Saxon Javerce), literally "a Worker of Guile," from some old 

 superstition regarding the bird as of ill omen. The bestowal of 

 this name upon an American bird allied to the starlings was no 

 doubt due to an effort on the part of the early settlers to name birds 

 after the more familiar ones of the homeland. The ground-nesting 

 habits, the long hind claw, the loud twittering flight notes and 

 clear song of the American bird may have given some slight reason 

 for this incongruous title. 



"Thrush" with its variants "throstle" and "throstle-kok," 

 as applied to the Song Thrush (Turdus musicus) of Europe, is an 

 old word and appears in its older forms in a treatise by Walter 

 de Biblesworth at the end of the thirteenth century. In the Brussels 

 Manuscript "throstle" seems to refer to the Missel Thrush (Turdus 

 viscivorus). The Song Thrush is also referred to by its other old 

 English name of "Maviz" (later "Mavis"). In this same treatise 

 of de Biblesworth's the European Blackbird (Turdus merula) is 



