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THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE NAMES 

 OF BRITISH BIRDS. 



By A. H. Meiklejohn. 



Although the names of our commoner British Birds are 

 more or less familiar to everyone, but little attention appears to 

 have been given to their original source and significance. The 

 subjoined list does not in any way lay claim to complete fulness, 

 but it is put forward in the hope that it may possibly arouse some 

 interest in this neglected side of our bird-nomenclature. In most 

 birds' names special stress is invariably laid on some well-known 

 or easily distinguished peculiarity either in cry, flight, or appear- 

 ance. It is interesting to note how many names are imitative of 

 birds' cries, as in pipit, shrike, twite, crow, owl, crake, &c, and 

 more especially in cuckoo, hoopoe, and kittiivake. The origin of 

 some of the names appears to be quite unknown, e. g. gull, auk, 

 garganey, &c. In the list given below no attempt has been made 

 to follow out the meaning of a name with a too great philological 

 keenness, as in that case I should be exceeding the necessarily 

 limited province of a paper of this kind. 



Fieldfare = field-farer, i.e. " the crosser (or traverser) of 

 the fields " — in allusion, of course, to its migratory habits. 



Ousel is simply a variation of the German amsel, a Black- 

 bird. 



Wheatear, probably = white-erse (arse) = white-rump — the 

 last a common name for the bird in Scotland and elsewhere. 

 Compare the French, cul blanc. Another suggested, though far 

 less probable, derivation is that it = whitty-er — whitterer, from 

 whitter, "to complain" — a word still used, I believe, in some 

 parts of Lincolnshire. 



Redstart = red-tail. (Compare wagstart for wagtail.) The 

 idea that start may here have the meaning of " to twitch or 



