Why do British Birds have Funny Names?
British birdwatchers must know the names of a good two or three hundred separate species. They know the name even if they have never seen the bird. But do we really pay much attention to these wonderful and often mysterious names? Or does familiarity breed contempt? For these names form a fascinating collection. For every obvious name there is an odd or an obscure one. For every obvious crossbill, razorbill, greenfinch, woodpecker, warbler, treecreeper, swift or flycatcher there is a mysterious wigeon, garganey, gadwall, bittern, siskin, pipit, shrike or twite. An hour with the Concise Oxford Dictionary illuminates the origins of British bird names and shows us the debt that English owes to a whole range of other languages, both Romance and Germanic, from which it has made so many borrowings over the centuries. Many birds owe their English names to the classical languages. Phalarope means “coot-foot”: in classical Greek phalaris means coot and pous/podos means foot – as in chiropodist.
