Hawk Names
We have naturally a set of names taken from the various species of falcons. To this class belongs Haggard, probably related to Anglo-Sax. haga, hedge, and used of a hawk which had acquired incurable habits of wildness by preying for itself. But Haggard is also a personal name (Chapter VIII). Spark, earlier Sparhawk, is the sparrow-hawk. It is found already in Anglo-Saxon as a personal name, and the full Sparrowhawk also exists. Tassell is a corruption of tiercel, a name given to the male peregrine, so termed, according to the legendary lore of venery—
“Because he is, commonly, a third part lesse than the female.” (Cotgrave, )
Juliet calls Romeo her “tassell gentle” (ii. 2). Muskett was a name given to the male sparrow-hawk.
“Musket, a lytell hauke, mouchet.” (Palsgrave.)
Mushet is the same name. It comes from Ital. moschetto, a little fly. For its later application to a firearm cf. falconet. Other names of the hawk class are Buzzard and Puttock, i.e. kite-—
“Milan, a kite, puttock, glead”
(Cotgrave);
and to the same bird we owe the name Gleed, from a Scandinavian name for the bird
“And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind.” (Deut. xiv. 13.)
To this class also belongs Ramage—
“Ramage, of, or belonging to, branches; also, ramage, hagard, wild, homely, rude”
(Cotgrave)—
and sometimes Lennard, an imitative form of “lanner,” the name of an inferior hawk—
Falcunculus, a leonard.”
(Holyoak, Lat. Dict., 1612.)
Povey is a dialect name for the owl, a bird otherwise absent from the surname list.