A Thesaurus of Bird Names

Etymology of European Lexis through Paradigms

Desfayes, Michel, 1999. "Thesaurus of bird names - Etymology of European lexis through paradigms" is also available on CD-Rom.  Consultation and use of the book is made easy by the possibility to read simultaneously the information of both volumes, and to have quick access to the required species, language or word. ISBN 2-88426-022-6

Volume I: The names of birds, 1246 pages. ISBN 2-88426-022-6
Volume II: paradigm. 1286 pages. ISBN 2-88426-023-4. CD-Rom avec plus de 180 planches en couleurs de Walter Linsenmaier et Paul Barruel, Les oiseaux nicheurs d’Europe, éditions Silva Zurich, Musée d’histoire naturelle La Chaux-de-Fonds, et sonorisé par le chant de 35 espèces, Jean-Claude Roché, La Sitelle, France.

Michel Desfayes was born in Saillon (Switzerland) in 1927. With a passion for nature since his early childhood, he dedicated himself to ornithology, first in his native country and later in North America from 1952 to 1978, becoming ornithological assistant in the Division of Bird of the United States National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Back in Europe, he devotes his time to aquatic botany while continuing research on his lifework, the book presented here.

Presentation in IBIS 142: 335, 2000

DESFAYES, M. A Thesaurus of Bird Names. Etymology of European Lexis through Paradigms, Vol. I: The Names of Birds, Volume II: The Paradigms. A bird by any other name ... These two massive and magnificent volumes contain around 100 000 bird names in 40 or so Indo-European languages. About 450 European and Middle Eastern species, with a few well-known introduced birds - chicken, turkey, etc. - are covered in Volume 1. Within each species, the names are listed by language from Irish Gaelic east to the Indo-European languages of Afghanistan and neighbouring regions, then Caucasian and Hamito-Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) and finally Romany (Gypsy). The modern language groups involved are thus Celtic, Romance, Slavonic, Lettic (Baltic), Germanic, Albanian, Greek, Iranian, the enigmatic Basque tongue, Hamito-Semitic and Caucasian. There are cross-references within each group of names to appendices in Volume Il and species numbers in Volume 1. The breadth and depth of coverage is truly astonishing: for example, out of 13 pages of names for the Magpie Pica pica, seven pages are dedicated to German appellations, and among 20 pages for the Wren Troglodytes troglodytes, five focus on French names, prominent among which is roitelet ('kinglet') now appropriated for Regulus. Working on the premise that local speech, the true 'fossils' of vocabulary, is of pre-eminent importance for etymological research. the author also deals in masterly fashion with names in the dialects of English.

Preceding the all-important paradigms in Volume Il is an appendix of bird names in ancient languages and one giving the sources of scientific names borrowed from Greek, Latin or regional speech, also a subsection on unidentified species (21 languages)

The paradigms (or filiations) attempt to show chromatic (claimed to be the most complete collection of color words ever compiled), morphological, acoustic and kinetic origin. The following topics are dealt with in appendices 7-15: arm, wing, articulation; to seize or capture; smallness; diving and swimming birds, various ways of diving; flight and lightness; circle and birds (i.e. rotund or circling in the air); names for 'bird'; miscellaneous names (nestling, feather, flock, etc.); lexicons of falconry, etc. More than 2000 bat names are given in Appendix 16, the names of over 1 000 bird species front francophone overseas countries in Appendix 17 and some 8000 Latin-American names (Spanish, Portuguese and Amerindian) for 1700 species in Appendix 18

This book is a stupendous achievement, a philological tour de force, a celebration of birds, and of man's relationship with nature, expressed through the wondrous gift of language; it is endlessly entertaining, instructive and illuminating. A few moments of browsing and you are likely to get hooked; when it comes to word search, the CD-ROM is recommended.

M.G. Wilson

Recent ornithological Publications -335 - © 2000 British Ornithologists' Union, Ibis, 142, 333-344

Mehr als 450 europäische Vogelarten sind in diesem voluminösen Werk in ihrer Namen in mehr als 40 aktuellen Sprachen und Dialekten in Europa und dem Nahen Osten zusammengestellt, wozu mehr als 100.000 Namen zusammengetragen wurden, die offiziellen und lokale, darunter auch viele aus "aussterbenden" Dialekten. Hinzu kommen auf der beiliegenden CD noch 8000 latein-amerikanische Namen von 1700 Vogelarten von überseeischen frankophonen Ländern und mehr als 2000 Namen für Fledermäuse. Die Fülle von zusammengetragenen Namen ist beeindruckend, auch wenn sicher nicht vollständige, was der Autor selbst gerade für den deutschen Sprachkreis mit seinen sehr zahlreichen Dialekten auch betont. Allein für die Elster erstreckt sich die Liste deutscher Namen über- 6,5 Seiten. In Band 2 versucht der Autor, die Herkunft der Namen zu klären, indem er sie nach ihrer morphologischen, akustischen, farblichen oder kinetischen Bedeutung hinterfragt und gruppiert. Entsprechende Verweise finden sich in Band 1, wodurch die Arbeit erleichtert wird. Für Linguisten, Dialektforscher und Historiker ist dieses Werk mit einem Gesamtumfang von mehr als 2500 Seiten eine Fundgrube. Es erzählt über die Namen und ihre Verwendung in den verschiedenen Ländern und Regionen auch vieles über die Kulturgeschichte der Vögel und das Verhältnis zwischen Vogel und Mensch.

F. Bairlein