Birds
Bird names are especially common, and it does not need much imagination to see how readily and naturally a man might be nicknamed Hawke for his fierceness, Crowe from a gloomy aspect, or Nightingale for the gift of sweet song. Many of these surnames go back to words which are now either obsolete or found only in dialect. The peacock was once the Poe, an early loan from Lat. pavo, or, more fully, Pocock
“A sheaf of pocok arwes, bright and kene,
Under his belt he bar ful thriftily.”
(A, 104.)
The name Pay is another form of the same word. Coe, whence Hedgecoe, is an old name for the jackdaw—
“Cadow, or coo, or chogh (chough), monedula” (Prompt. Parv.)—
but may also stand for cow, as we find, in defiance of gender and sex, such entries as Robert le cow, William le vache. Those birds which have now assumed a font-name, such as Jack daw, Mag pie, of course occur without it as surnames, e.g. Daw and Pye—
“The thief the chough, and eek the jangelyng pye” (Parliament of Fowls, 305).
The latter has a dim. Pyatt.
Rainbird is a local name for the green woodpecker, but as an East-Anglian name it is most likely an imitative form of Fr. Rimbaud or Raimbaud, identical with Anglo-Sax. Regenbeald. Knott is the name of a bird which frequents the sea-shore and, mindful of Cnut’s wisdom, retreats nimbly before the advancing surf—
“The knot that called was Canutus’ bird of old.”
(Drayton, Polyolbion, xxv. 368.)
This historical connection is most probably due to folk-etymology. Titmus is of course for tit-mouse. Dialect names for the woodpecker survive in Speight, Speke, and Spick, Pick (Chapter III). The same bird was also called woodwall—
“In many places were nyghtyngales,
Alpes, fynches, and wodewales”
(Romaunt of the Rose, 567)—
hence, in some cases, the name Woodall. The Alpe, or bullfinch, mentioned in the above lines, also survives as a surname. Dunnock and Pinnock are dialect names for the sparrow. It was called in Anglo-Norman muisson, whence Musson. Starling is a dim. of Mid. Eng. stare, which has itself given the surname Starr
“The stare, that the counseyl can be-wrye.” (Parliament of Fowls, 348.)
Heron is the French form of the bird-name which was in English Herne—
“I come from haunts of coot and hern.” (Tennyson, The Brook, 1. 1.)
The Old French dim. heronceau also passed into English—
“I wol nat tellen of hir strange sewes (courses),
Ne of hir swannes, ne of hire heronsewes.”
(F, 67.)
As a surname it has been assimilated to the local, and partly identical, Hearnshaw (Chapter XII). Some commentators go to this word to explain Hamlet’s use of handsaw-
“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw” (Hamlet, ii. 2).
When the author’s father was a boy in Suffolk eighty years ago, the local name for the bird was pronounced exactly like answer. Grew is Fr. grue, crane, Lat. grus, gru-. Butter, Fr. butor, “a bittor” (Cotgrave), is a dialect name for the bittern, called a “butter-bump” by Tennyson’s Northern Farmer (1. 31). Culver is Anglo-Sax. culfre, a pigeon—
“Columba, a culver, a dove”
(Cooper)—
hence the local Culverhouse. Dove often becomes Duff. Gaunt is sometimes a dialect form of gannet, used in Lincolnshire of the crested grebe. Popjoy may have been applied to the successful archer who became king of the popinjay for the year. The derivation of the word, Old Fr. papegai, whence Mid. Eng. papejay—
“The briddes synge, it is no nay,
The sparhawk and the papejay,
That joye it was to heere”
(B, 1956)—
is obscure, though various forms of it are found in most of the European languages. In English it was applied not only to the parrot, but also to the green woodpecker. The London Directory form is Pobgee.
With bird nicknames may be mentioned Callow, unfledged, cognate with Lat. calvus, bald. Its opposite also survives as Fleck and Flick-—
“Flygge, as byrdis, maturus, volabilis.”
(Prompt. Parv.)
Margaret Paston, writing (1460) of the revived hopes of Henry VI., says—
“Now he and alle his olde felawship put owt their fynnes, and arn ryght flygge and mery.”