My wife and I were admiring an image of the strange-looking bird called the nightjar when she asked me, naturally enough, what the “jar” in its name meant. I, naturally enough, turned to the OED, whose entry was revised in 2003:
1.a. A nocturnal, insectivorous, migratory bird, Caprimulgus europaeus (family Caprimulgidae), of Europe and eastern and central Asia, which has grey-brown cryptic plumage and a distinctive churring call. Also called fern-owl, goatsucker.
1630 Ill boding Owles, Night-iarrs, and Rauens with wide-stretched throats.
T. May, Continuation Lucan vii. sig. K4
[…]
1991 Suddenly another sound begins, completely evoking the spirit of the ancient heath—the hypnotic ‘churr’ of the nocturnal nightjar.
Bird Watching June 75/3
It has this interesting etymology:
The second element in the name reflects the bird’s distinctive call; compare other (chiefly regional) names for the bird, as churn-owl n., churr owl n., eve-churr n. 2, eve-jar n., jar-owl n., nightchurr n. Many similar imitative formations for the name of this bird are found in other languages.
(It would be nice if they’d mentioned some of those imitative formations.) If we turn to the synonym goatsucker (entry revised 2016) we find an equally interesting etymology:
< goat n. + sucker n.,
after classical Latin caprimulgus (Pliny; < capra she-goat (see capriole n.) + mulgēre to milk: see milk v.),
itself after ancient Greek αἰγοθήλας (< αἰγο-, αἴξ goat (see Aegipan n.) + θηλάζειν to suck).
Compare goat-milker n.
Whence also the Russian козодой ‘goat-milker.’
You can hear “the bird’s distinctive call” here.
I wonder which is the original nightjar species that has a jar/churr-like call. Certainly not nighthawks, let alone whippoorwills.
INaturalist shows only the Eurasian nightjar in Britain, so presumably that’s it.
A few people have reported their good fortune to have seen or heard a whippoorwill in Cook Co. I haven’t heard one in decades. The closest I’ve come would be re-reading Faulkner’s Barn Burning.
No relation to the chupacabra, which is said to suck blood, not milk.
Also Ziegenmelker in German.
Fans of strange-looking birds may enjoy the Pennant-winged Nightjar (keep watching till you see him in flight) and the Standard-winged Nightjar (in Ghana), also raising its standards (on Facebook).
Then there are their relatives the potoos, but that’s probably enough links,
The Standard-winged nightjar does not have standard wings.
The Standard-winged nightjar does not have standard wings.
stan·dard ˈstan-dərd
1
: a conspicuous object (such as a banner) formerly carried at the top of a pole and used to mark a rallying point especially in battle or to serve as an emblem
2
a
: a long narrow tapering flag that is personal to an individual or corporation and bears heraldic devices
Right, I was making a funny.
There is an enjoyable treatment of ‘goat-suckers’ (various lizards or salamanders) in the ancient and modern Near East on p. 398ff (no. 3) in Hezy Mutzafi ‘Neo-Aramaic Animal Names’ in the volume Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic, in open access here. Delîlo Îzolî in his 1992 Kurmanji dictionary Ferheng: Kurdî – Tirkî, Türkçe – Kürtçe gives Kurmanji bizinmêj, literally ‘goat-sucker’, for a kind of lizard. (He also gives pezmijok, lit. ‘sucker of small cattle’ and mangemijok, lit. ‘cow-sucker’.) I suppose one has to blame someone when the livestock don’t give milk in the morning.
Roald Dahl’s An African Story comes to mind, too.
I was struck by “cryptic plumage.”
“Being cryptic means survival”.
As a predation “strategy” it means breakfast.
#
In ecology, crypsis is the ability of an animal or a plant[1] to avoid observation or detection by other animals. It may be a predation strategy or an antipredator adaptation. Methods include camouflage, nocturnality, subterranean lifestyle and mimicry.
#
From the little I know about IT cryptography, I have the impression that it has not learned much from animals. In particular I find I have been thinking off and on recently about mimicry, without making the connection.
Steganophany is found in many walks of life. For example playing dead, or maintaining an innocent mien when you’re up to no good. Mimicry simulates a different thing, whereas steganophany simulates a different state of the same thing.
Revelation is inimical to life – except when it’s strategic, as exemplified by an exhibitionist. Or by a porcupine.
I would have thought that jar here is simply the Middle English jarre ‘noise’, cf. jarfly, the normal word for a cicada in West Virginia in my boyhood. (I assumed at the time, of course, that the name referred to our pastime of catching them and putting them in jars.)
Just fyi, the slapping noise at the start and end of the YouTube video is made by the bird clapping its wings.
I have written a Python script that queries Wikipedia for the names of an article in various translations. In my experience, it works great for the names of birds and plants. In other contexts, the result is a bit more hit and miss. The nightjar gives this result (apologies for any linebreak issues):
Arabic: سبدية
Armenian: Իսկական այծկիթներ
Asturian: Caprimulgidae
Basque: Zata
Belarusian: Леляковыя
Breton: Adren
Burmese: မြေဝပ်ငှက်
Cantonese: 夜鷹科
Catalan: Caprimúlgids
Cebuano: Caprimulgidae
Chinese: 夜鹰科
Croatian: Legnjevi
Czech: Lelkovití
Danish: Natravne
Dutch: Nachtzwaluwen
Egyptian Arabic: سبد
Esperanto: Kaprimulgedoj
Finnish: Kehrääjät (heimo)
French: Caprimulgidae
Galician: Avenoiteiras
Georgian: უფეხურასებრნი
German: Nachtschwalben
Hebrew: תחמסיים
Hindi: छप्पा
Hungarian: Lappantyúfélék
Icelandic: Náttfarar
Ido: Kaprimulgo
Indonesian: Cabak
Irish: Tuirne lín
Italian: Caprimulgidae
Japanese: ヨタカ科
Kabardian: БжэнщӀэф лъэпкъыр
Kazakh: Тентекқұс тұқымдастар
Korean: 쏙독새과
Kotava: Sempuz (Caprimulgidae)
Latin: Caprimulgidae
Latvian: Lēļu dzimta
Lithuanian: Lėliniai
Malayalam: രാച്ചുക്കുകൾ
Malay: Tukang (burung)
Navajo: Naakʼidoolwoshii
Northern Frisian: Naachtswaalken
Norwegian Bokmål: Nattravner
Norwegian Nynorsk: Natteramnfamilien
Persian: شبگردان
Polish: Lelkowate
Portuguese: Caprimulgidae
Russian: Настоящие козодои
Rusyn: Козодоёвы
Scots: Fern houlet
Serbian: Легњеви
Simple English: Nightjar
Slovenian: Podhujke
Spanish: Caprimulgidae
Swahili: Kirukanjia
Swedish: Nattskärror
Tamil: பக்கி
Turkish: Çobanaldatangiller
Ukrainian: Дрімлюгові
Vietnamese: Họ Cú muỗi
Waray: Caprimulgidae
Welsh: Troellwyr
Just be aware that sometimes the name given in the WP heading is the one of the genus, and sometimes the one of the family.
And for some languages, WP has the Latin designation of an animal or plant as heading of the article, not the native designation (e.g., Italian in this case).
That is par for the course on WP. In the above list it also applies to Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Turkish, among others.
@Hans, Bathrobe: Yes, I am fully aware of that.
Yeah, I often use Spanish Wikipedia to get a Spanish name for a fish or bird when Google Translate insists on giving me something that’s a homonym in English. Even though I start from Danish. It didn’t use to do that, recency illusion and all that but I think it changed a year or two ago.
Point is, the Spanish WP article often has the systematic name as the headword, but a colloquial name usually appears in the above-the-TOC summary. And then my Mexican friend goes “oh, but those only exist in Spain”.
Because there is so much regional variety in Spanish, specifically with new world bird names, it won’t do to pick any particular one, and using the Latin name is a (slightly Solomonic) compromise. I don’t know if that is a policy of es.WP, or just a custom.