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 appearance. 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 kittiwake. 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 Blackbird.
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
