Of Ahrensbök and his peers

Abstract

Terms associated with birds of prey that kill with their feet („Grifftoter“) are widely used in the West and North Germanic languages as heads or modifiers in field names, place names and aquatic names. Above all, the names of the larger birds such as eagle, vulture, hawk and falcon often have descriptive heads that refer to structures in the natural environment (such as Falkenburg, -stein, -hagen etc.). However, the range of expressions and meanings of these names is strongly characterized by polysemy, heteronymy, and generalisations. The analysis of dialect dictionaries results in large-scale diatopic word fields with a juxtaposition of proper and substitute words of birds of prey, with mixed zones, avoidance of synonymy („Synonymenflucht“), gaps or hyperlexicalizations that give rise to misunderstandings. The article shows that not only the distinctiveness according to striking characteristics, but also the cultural-ecological validity is important for the classification of the birds of prey. – Conclusion: The lexical naming motive underlying the names of birds of prey is by no means always clear; a name like Ahrensbok may well mean a hawk wood.