{"id":11136,"date":"2018-08-28T06:28:13","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T13:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=11136"},"modified":"2018-08-28T06:47:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T13:47:30","slug":"the-aromatic-oriole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/28\/the-aromatic-oriole\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aromatic Oriole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Golden Oriole\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rickwright\/4647203959\/in\/photolist-85HhYu-85E8Qc-6wjSa6\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4009\/4647203959_310b12271c.jpg\" alt=\"Golden Oriole\" width=\"500\" height=\"395\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Wow. Yes, this seems to be the best photograph I have of a golden oriole, taken a few years ago in the days leading up to our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ventbird.com\/birding-tour\/2019\/05\/27\/france-birds-art-in-burgundy\">Birds and Art tour of Burgundy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But what I&#8217;m concerned about this morning is not my photographic aptitude but one of the odder names assigned this lovely bird, the German &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=vztlAAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA211&amp;lpg=PA211&amp;dq=vogel+weihrauch&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=c0aFZzPRv0&amp;sig=K35AodrdHHSKT3V9tdHS7_q9aUk&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwibs9n93Y_dAhVGMt8KHbViBnM4ChDoATADegQIBxAB#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">Weihrauch<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 447px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/images.metmuseum.org\/CRDImages\/md\/web-large\/DP-14219-001.jpg\" width=\"447\" height=\"624\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>A twelfth-century copper alloy censer, Germany; now in the Met.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;Weihrauch,&#8221; literally &#8220;holy smoke,&#8221; just means &#8220;incense.&#8221; It&#8217;s not impossible that oriolids are fragrant in the hand &#8212; plenty of other birds are, from auklets to shrikes. In this case, though, that theory would throw us off the scent, so to speak; instead, &#8220;Weihrauch&#8221; is the product of that familiar linguistic process called folk etymology.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/imgc.allpostersimages.com\/img\/print\/posters\/georges-louis-buffon-male-south-american-yellow-oriole_a-G-9474993-8880731.jpg\" width=\"366\" height=\"488\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Folk etymology is not the same as fake etymology, the pseudo-scholarly fabrication of connections between words that are in fact not historically related. Want to see some fakes? Just spend a little time on the internet, or even, if you can bear it, talking to people.<\/p>\n<p>Fake etymology is a process of explanation. Folk etymology is a process of creation, in which an unfamiliar word or form is altered to resemble a familiar one. One of my favorite examples: the name &#8220;tiger meat&#8221; for the spicy midwestern bar food arose, I suspect, from &#8220;beef tartare,&#8221; when the incomprehensible &#8220;tartare&#8221; was humorously transformed into an animal name. Good ol&#8217; google turns up plenty of other specimens.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11137\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Screen-Shot-2018-08-28-at-9.09.37-AM-227x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Screen-Shot-2018-08-28-at-9.09.37-AM-227x300.png 227w, http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Screen-Shot-2018-08-28-at-9.09.37-AM.png 666w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It turns out that among the many, many echoic names given the bird with the golden voice is the German &#8220;w\u00eer\u00f4k.&#8221; (I don&#8217;t hear it, myself, but <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/diedeutschenvoge00suol#page\/172\/mode\/2up\/search\/wirok\">Suolahti<\/a> tells us so.) Johann Leonhard <a href=\"file:\/\/\/Users\/alisonberinger\/Downloads\/%255BBand%201.%255D.pdf\">Frisch fills in the rest of the story<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The two final notes of the bird&#8217;s song sound like &#8220;i&#8221; and &#8220;o,&#8221; and so &#8220;i&#8221; and &#8220;o&#8221; occur in all of its names&#8230;. Some have assumed that the name Wyrock, with the long &#8220;i&#8221; and &#8220;o,&#8221; must be Low German, and so mispronounce it &#8220;Weihrauch,&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>self-consciously and hypercorrectly running the name through a High German diphthongization to make it more comfortingly familiar, if semantically a bit bizarre.<\/p>\n<p>Folk etymology becomes especially interesting when its products inspire sometimes fantastic &#8220;back stories&#8221; to explain them. I haven&#8217;t run across any narratives contrived to explain &#8220;Weihrauch&#8221; (not yet, at least), but the ecclesiastical association may be behind another folk name for the species <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/105288#page\/185\/mode\/1up\">listed by Naumann<\/a> &#8212; &#8220;Bruder Wyrauch,&#8221; &#8220;Brother Incense.&#8221; I plan to use that one from now on myself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow. Yes, this seems to be the best photograph I have of a golden oriole, taken a few years ago in the days leading up to our Birds and Art tour of Burgundy. But what I&#8217;m concerned about this morning is not my photographic aptitude but one of the odder names assigned this lovely bird, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/28\/the-aromatic-oriole\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Aromatic Oriole&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11139,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions\/11139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}