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Re: [romconlang] bird names

Hi Adam! You may have already seen the etymology for this, but Italian rondone and it's more obvious kin are apparently cognate to French hirondelle, likewise Portuguese andorinh�o. andorinh�o is formed through suffixation of -�o from andorinha. French hirondelle is borrowed from Old Prov. irondela, diminutive of irunda. The original French which the Prov. form supplanted was arondelle < aronde. The Spanish cognates appear to be golondrina and andorina (the latter inlfluenced by the Portuguese form; see the Royal Spanish Academy dictionary).
The ultimate Latin origin appears to be hirundo (swallo, martin, small bird).
The Romanian appears to be drepnea < an assumed Latin *drepanella < drepanis.
The Hebrew appears to be sus (swallow or swift); the qere tradition and the Modern Hebrew is sis. The LXX translates this chelidon (swallow) and the Vulgate translates as pullus hirundinis. 

Hope this helps a little!
Eamon
On 2/16/2012 8:08 AM, Adam Walker wrote:

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 com�n
French -- martinet noir
Galician -- cirrio com�n
Italian -- rondone
Latin -- apus
Piedmontese -- rondon
Portuguese -- andorinh�o-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