Where Did Those Bird Names Come From?

I’m a long-time birder. We birders bandy about bird monikers as if they are part of everyday speech: Grebe. Parula. Cormorant. Sandpiper. Vireo. Swallow. Nuthatch. Bunting. Nighthawk, Killdeer, Osprey, Wren.

Some bird names have very long standing, going back to languages we no longer speak. Some are echoic (sort of): Killdeer is, at least to some ears, the sound the bird makes: “kill-dee.” The bird doesn’t go around killing deer. The bird is a member of the plover family and is known by some as the “noisy plover,” as opposed to the Piping Plovers beloved by the Chicago birding community. Killdeer’s scientific name is Charadrius vociferus – the “loud voiced” plover. The Piping Plover, its cousin, is rather more approvingly named Charadrius melodus, or melodic plover – the plover who pipes rather than cheekily screaming. Don’t worry too much about the first part of the name. Charadrius derives from Greek and refers, most likely, to a bird that nested in ravines (charadras). Linnaeus adapted the Latin version of the word to characterize the bird.

Of course, you’re probably reading and thinking, impatiently, “Yeah. But what about Plover” Where did that come from? The answer is plain and straightforward: nobody knows. Speculation has persisted. The great nineteenth century etymologist W. W. Skeat said, in 1888, that the name came from medieval Latin pluviarius, having to do with rain, “because these birds are said to be most seen and caught in a rainy season.” Skeat was not alone in this analysis. According to Susan Myers in The Bird Name Book (2022), this etymology is fanciful. An earlier writer, Ernest A. Choate in his Dictionary of American Bird Names 1973) cites R. D. MacLeod, who enumerates many “authorities” who lean on the association of plovers with rain, in his 1954 Key to the Names of British Birds.  Choate flatly says that “none of these holds water” (his pun, not mine, though I like it). So the origin of “plover” shall remain a mystery.

Swallow is an interesting case. The word – the one for the bird – has its root in the Old English form of the word, swealwe. English is one of many Germanic languages, including, of course, German, as well as Dutch and the languages that derive from Old Norse (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Frisian). Linguists have tracked our related languages back to a Proto-Indo-European ancestor language that gave rise to many other languages, including Russian and Polish. Interestingly, the word for “nightingale” in Russian is solowej and it’s slowik in Polish. Nightingales and swallows in mythology are sister birds, particularly in the story of the sisters Philomela and Procne, who, being chased by a vengeful king, are rescued by the gods, who transform them into birds – a nightingale and a swallow.

One theory, which is interesting if not at all definitive, is that the name comes from the Proto-Germanic swalwo, which means “cleft stick,” in reference to the forked tail of some swallows.

Sparrow in Old English was spearwa. Its deeper origins referred to all small birds and their fluttering activity. Note the similarity to the Old English for “swallow” (swealwe). As English developed, that internal “ea” became simply “a” and the terminal “wa” or “we” converted to “ow.”

Many birds are named for their behaviors: Oystercatchers, Turnstones, Skimmers, Woodpeckers, Flycatchers. They do as their names suggest.

Speaking of behavior, the Brown Thrasher. This bird is, of course, brown, and it thrashes. It disrupts the leaf litter and soil with its beak, seeking nutrients. Its name also links it to the thrushes, which it resembles with its streaked breast. It is, however, not in the Thrush family. Rather it is closely related to the Catbird and the Mockingbird, in the Mimidae. According to Wikipedia (and scholarly studies), “The Brown Thrasher may have the largest song repertoire of any North American bird, which has been documented as at least over 1.100 songs.”

Some birds receive their names simply from appearance or as noted earlier, sound: Dunlin and Whimbrel are two. The word “dunlin” was first recorded in the early 16th century. Its roots are “dun,” or dull grey or brown, and the suffix “-ling,” denoting a thing; thus, a dull brown thing. “Whimbrel” is, like “Killdeer,” echoic. It refers to the bird’s high-pitched whistled calls.

We do have bird names that seem elegant and intriguing, but that have quite prosaic origins. “Gallinule” might make one think something French and exciting (the genus Gallinula was. after all, introduced by a French zoologist). But it means, quite simply, “little hen.” The Gallinule family includes Moorhens, with our Common Gallinule the only representative in the Americas.

So what about Coots? You might think, looking at a Coot on the water, that it’s a sort of duck. It doesn’t help that Coots are often seen consorting with ducks. But ducks they are not. They are closely related to the Sandhill Crane and to Rails. While they might be swimming among the ducks, they do not have webbed feet. As “All About Birds” points out, “Instead, each one of the coot’s long toes has broad lobes of skin that help it kick through the water. The broad lobes fold back each time the bird lifts its foot, so it doesn’t impede walking on dry land, though it supports the bird’s weight on mucky ground.” Coots are members of the genus Fulica and the family Railidae, along with Rails and Gallinules. The derivation of the word “coot” is unknown. While some see its origins in Middle Dutch (spoken in the Netherlands and what is now Belgium between the 12th and 16th centuries), others feel that the Dutch speakers took their word, koet, from English. The word, denoting a rail-like bird, probably originated in earlier Germanic languages from which Dutch and English evolved. By the 16th century, the bird was often called the “mad coot.” Henry VIII’s tutor, the English poet John Skelton, famously pejoratively called the bird “crazy.” They swim erratically (lumpy toes instead of webbed feet) and they are clumsy getting themselves airborne. The “crazy as a coot” phrase has become a cliché, its core  meaning gone. Most people who use it have never seen a Coot, its swimming, or its takeoff. Most people don’t know a hatter, either.

Speaking of pejoratives, Bufflehead. In the 17th century the term bufflehead meant a stupid person, someone foolish or overimpressed with himself. This is not the derivation of the term for the diving duck with the big white patch on the back of its head. The bird’s common name comes from anglicizing its genus name, Bucephala, which means “bull” or “bulbous” head. The bird, by the way, is also known as the Butter Ball and the Dipper.

Godwit has nothing at all to do with a god, the wit of a god, or anything much other than its status as a delicacy. Instead, “god-“ is from the Anglo-Saxon gōd, “good,” and –wight, creature. The words also, in some etymologies, mean “good eating.” Godwits are waders seen occasionally on our Midwest shores, mixed in with Yellowlegs and other such species. They are members of the scientific family Scolopacidae, along with Sandpipers, Curlews, Dowitchers, Woodcocks, Snipes, Turnstones, the aforementioned Dunlin and Willet, and other similar birds.

But enough of that. It’s time for sex and scandal. We’re talking about the Wren. In certain Middle English dialects, wran, derived from wranne or wrenne, meant “lascivious bird.” Male European wrens were observed to be polygynous, mating with two or more female birds in a breeding season: thus the “lascivious bird” reputation. American wrens are mostly not polygynous, though some are, as are Red-winged Blackbirds. It’s a survival strategy. Males build multiple nests to attract females and mate with those who occupy their nests, though some or even several nests go unrented. So that noisy bird you see might be telling a story different from what you thought it was telling. In the Midwest we have multiple species of Wren: Northern House Wren, Carolina Wren, Marsh Wren, and Winter Wren.

Phew. Move along! Nothing to see here! Look over there to another small but mighty bird: the Nuthatch. Let’s be clear from the outset: this bird does not hatch nuts. But in seasons of the year that lack insects, it does hack nuts, never mind hacking seeds they retrieve from feeders during all seasons. We most often observe Nuthatches going up or down tree trunks or moving along branches, probing the bark for insects. During insectless months, they carry seeds and even hard-shelled nuts to crotches in trees and jam them in so that they can go at them with their strong beaks – nut-hacking. A book from 1340 described the “Notehake, bryd,” one of the very first uses in English of the word nuthack. Susan Myers in The Bird Name Book cites W. B. Lockwood, who “postulated the Old English word hnuthæcca” as a possible origin of the bird’s name. The second part of the work is “presumably from the verb hæccan, ‘to hack’” We have two species of Nuthatch in our area: The Red-breasted Nuthatch and the White-breasted Nuthatch.

To end this chapter on bird naming, let’s briefly consider the Ovenbird. This small warbler with the big eye and streaked breast is one of the loudest birds in the forest, calling “tea-Cher, tea-Cher, tea-CHER, Tea-CHER, TEA-CHER.” as All About Birds tells us. Its name comes from its covered nest, a dome with a side entrance, like a Dutch oven. If you want to see one, you’ll need a mature forest, open understory and lots of leaf litter. Look on the ground or on low tree branches. It bobs as it walks.

If you enjoyed this brief treatise, let me know. It might prompt me to write more on bird names, something I’ve found fascinating for much of my adult life. Meanwhile, go watch a bird or two. You’ll be the better for it.

Edmund J. McDevitt
© June 2026