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Sorry for cross posting, but believe there are enough people no on (or at least not active on) bot Coanlang and the Ramolang iteration that it warrants the crossover. I decided, today, that I need a word for the swift in Carrajina, since it is a native species. So I thought I'd go my usual route -- look the word up in a bunch of Romance languages (plus Greek, Arabic and Ancient Hebrew), see how they cluster and then choose one of the options for which I could track down the etymology. But the names for this bird are all over the chart! Catalan -- falciot negre Greek -- maurotachtara Spanish -- vencejo común French -- martinet noir Galician -- cirrio común Italian -- rondone Latin -- apus Piedmontese -- rondon Portuguese -- andorinhão-preto Sardinian -- rundinone Sicilian -- rinninuni The only cluster there is the one comprising Italian, Piedmontese, Sardinian and Sicilian, but I lack good etymological sources for those languages, so I'm more or less stuck. The biggest surprise to me, was that the four Iberian languages (normally so similar in vocab choices) ALL strike out in vastly different directions. I'm wondering if I might not be better off inventing a name that strikes out in YET ANOTHER direction, since there seems to be almost no agreement on what to call this bird. But before I make up my mind, I was wondering if anyone knows what to call this bird in Romanian, Asturian, Provencal, Walloon, Arabic, Maltese, Venitian, Langobard, Ladin or Ancient Hebrew/Punic-Phonecian. Also, does anyone have an explination or even a reasonable guess as to why the names of this bird are so random? Adam [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]