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I found a nice site some months a go called MAGUS* -- short for Multilingual animal Glossary of Unveiled Synonyms -- which had long lists of bird and animal spiecies listed with their names in a bazillion languages. I only jotted down material that seemed relevant to my Carrajena project. Today I got it out and started looking at the bird species to see what birds I should have. Some names are pretty much consistant across the Romance langs and obviously derive directly from the Latin name (or appropriate VL modiication there of). Other birds are named from a diffeerent root in every other language. Why on earth would "duck", for example, derive from so many different sources while "stork" would be consistant across every Romlang except Romanian and even appear in Maltese which isn't a Romlang? ***Duck*** Latin anas Italian antara Friulian raze Ladin anera Romansh anda Sardinian craccicciola, pabidoi, anadre, anadi Romanian rat,a French canard Occitan guit, rit Catalan a\nec Spanish a/nade Galician pato Portuguese marreco Romany ratsoy, ratsa (cf. Fri., Rom.) Maltese papra Greek papia Where you've got, what?, eight different roots? With Friulian, Romanian and Occitan? sharing a root with Romany? ***Stork*** Latin ciconia Italian cicogna Friulian cicogne Ladin zicogna Romansh cicogna Sardinian cic?nnia, tziconna Romanian barza-alba~ French cigogne Occitan cigohna Catalan cigonya Spanish cigu:en~a Galician cegon~a Portuguese cegonha Romany kokosturko Maltese cikonja Greek pelargos Where you have ALL of them from the same source except the innovation in Romanian, plus a borrowing of the term into Maltese. What makes this root so much more robust than anas? And then there's ***Goose*** Latin anser Italian oca Friulian ocje Ladin aucia Romansh auca Sardinian coca, oca Romanian ga^sca French oie Occitan auca Catalan oca Spanish a/nsar Galician ganso Portuguese ganso Romany gansako, papin Maltese wizza Greek stahtochina Where almost the whole set shares the same VL root with only Spanish haveing the CL term and one(?) borrowing shared by Galician, Portugues and Romanian(?) and borrowed into Romany. Is there any empiracle reasoning which can be applied to htese various cases? ADam *Sorry I didn't jott down the URL but I'm sure a quick google'll find it.