Oxei, ox-eye (1 Viewer)

[paranoid numanoid]

Oxei (Turner, 1544) and ox-eye (many authors since!) serves as a vernacular name for the great tit. But it also refers to other birds which seem unrelated like the dunlin, ringed plover (I think), treecreeper etc.
Is it an onomatopoeic name, primarily, do you think (as FO Morris' son thought), ie like the "teacher teacher" song of the great tit in Spring?
Or is it to do with the black and white "target" or "bullseye" pattern on face or head, discernible in some but less so in others, (cf Fr. bouvr(o)euil for bullfinch)?
Or am I missing a different clue?
What do you think?

 

[paranoid numanoid]

Oxei (Turner, 1544) and ox-eye (many authors since!) serves as a vernacular name for the great tit. But it also refers to other birds which seem unrelated like the dunlin, ringed plover (I think), treecreeper etc.
Is it an onomatopoeic name, primarily, do you think (as FO Morris' son thought), ie like the "teacher teacher" song of the great tit in Spring?
Or is it to do with the black and white "target" or "bullseye" pattern on face or head, discernible in some but less so in others, (cf Fr. bouvr(o)euil for bullfinch)?
Or am I missing a different clue?
What do you think?

... and of course the ox-eye daisy, which must lend weight to the circle within a circle pattern theory. Maybe!

 

[Björn Bergenholtz]

Note that the Swedish name of the Great Tit Parus major is talgoxe [talg (tallow/suet/lard) + oxe (Ox)], most often said to origin in its fondness of talg, during the Winter + it's size ('big as an ox', the largest of i'ts kind', of similar species, among its closest relatives), but if that's true (at least the latter part) is far harder to tell. I somewhat doubt this particular explanation, I'm not so sure that the ancient/medieval Swedes, the local peasants, back in the Middle Ages, apprehended a striking difference in size between the Great, Blue or Coal tit. But, of course, they might have.

The name talgoxe is known in Swedish literature since 1609 (though, at that point as talgukse). In the early 1700's it was written tallhoxe (note that tall is the Swedish word for Pine [tree]), and in 1746 Linnaeus established the modern name/version, in his Fauna Svecica [at that time (hyphenated) as "Talg-oxe"].

There have been suggestions that it might origin in the expression "hungry (alt. greedy or even. gluttonous) as an Ox", as in greedy for/of tallow/suet/lard (which is easier to believe watching its frenzy around the Winter feeders). Others have related it to the disparaging expression "latoxe" (lat = lazy) + the same Ox, meaning lazybones (or slowpoke, in US English), hence its laziness to fix its own food, if so making it a; sponger, freeloader, or cadger (alt. a moocher, in US English), the Bird who takes the 'easiest way out', simply feeding on what's served.

Other explanations are, as well, possible.

I guess we (Swedes) have to accept that we simply don't know the very true origin of this Bird name.

Stay safe!

Björn

PS. But we do know that Oxei (Turner, 1544) and ox-eye, has nothing to do with Oxie.