🚀 go-pugleaf

At 09:10 22/10/98 +0100, you wrote:
>On Thu, 22 Oct 1998, Jon Patrick wrote:
>
>> I asked
>> > Iratiko basoilarra - what might be the english name of this bird have?
>> Larry replied
>> Well, birds are hardly my strong suit.  But my dictionary tells me that
>> "basoilar" means "capercaillie", a kind of grouse.  "Irati" is the name
>> of a forest in the east of the country, so the title means "The
>> Capercaillie of Irati".
>>
>> I have just remembered I have the Biological dictionary of euskara which
has
>> the entry
>>
>> Tetrao urogallus
>>
>> eus     basoilar
>> sp       urogallo
>> fren    grand te'tras
>> eng     capercaillie
>>
>> Can anyone give a more common english name for this bird?
>
>As far as I know, `capercaillie' is the only English name, and it's one
>that is quite familiar to me.  In Britain, the bird is found chiefly
>(only?) in Scotland, and the English name derives from Scots Gaelic
><capull coille> `horse of the woods'.  The bird is found only in
>northern Europe, as far as I know, and so it won't have acquired a
>different English name elsewhere.  It's a kind of grouse, but none of my
>dictionaries gives any other name for it.  Aulestia suggests `wild cock'
>as another English name, but I don't know where he got that: it is not
>confirmed by my English dictionaries.
>
>
>Larry Trask
>COGS
>University of Sussex
>Brighton BN1 9QH
>UK
>
>larryt@cogs.susx.ac.uk
>
[Ed]
Just some additional information:
My Spanish-Dutch dictionary translates 'urogallo' as 'woudhoen' (but also
as 'auerhoen' and 'woerhoen'), i.e. wood-hen or -fowl. That is the same as
'wood-cock', except for the sex of the bird.
...and a general comment:
As you remarked, there are no capercaillies outside Scotland and its
region, so the name 'basoilar' must mean a different kind of fowl, maybe
superficially similar (don't forget the long presence of Basque fishermen
in northern European waters). It seems to me that, as occurs in other
cases, 'basoilar' , 'urogallo' , 'woodcock' etc. are basically generic
names for some class of fowl (like 'seagull' for another kind), this one
living in woods, and applied to the locally occurring species. This
phenomenon is not limited to birds: cf. plant names like Lat. fagus,
Grk.(Dor.) phagós, etc. or fish names (e.g. about every dictionary I have
gives a different species as the Dutch translation of 'merluza').

Ed.
Eduard Selleslagh
B-9120          Haasdonk (Beveren)
Belgium
Phone & Fax: +32-3-775.69.69    E-Mail: edsel@glo.be