BOOKS: 100 Birds and How They Got Their Names
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2002:
100 Birds & How They Got Their Names
by Diana Wells, illustrated by Lauren Jarrett
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (708 Broadway, New York, NY 10003), 2002.
297 pages, hardcover. $18
The title 100 Birds & How They Got Their Names is somewhat
misleading, because only a small part of each of Diana Wells’
species entries actually concerns how or why the likes of the booby,
goatsucker, and titmouse came to be identified as they are.
At that, some of the entries could be disputed, as Wells
consistently favors descriptive origins over the onamatopoeic, even
when the onamatopoeic explanation is seemingly obvious. Wells
insists, for instance, that the titmouse is named “from the Old
Icelandic titr, meaning ‘small,’ and the Anglo-Saxon mase, ‘small
bird,'” though she concedes that, “The chickadee’s name is
onomatopoeic, from the sound of its call; the Cherokee Indians
called it tsikililt.”