When I saw the title, I thought it was about a human scuba diver killing the eagle. Pleased (and fascinated) to see it wasn't.
This from the on-line etymology dictionary—
“loon (n.1)
large diving bird (especially the Great Northern Diver), 1630s, apparently an alteration of loom in this sense, which is from a Scandinavian source (compare Norwegian lom, from Old Norse lomr "loon")“.
The “lunatic” derivation is evidently just folk etymology.
This from the on-line etymology dictionary—
“loon (n.1)
large diving bird (especially the Great Northern Diver), 1630s, apparently an alteration of loom in this sense, which is from a Scandinavian source (compare Norwegian lom, from Old Norse lomr "loon")“.
The “lunatic” derivation is evidently just folk etymology.
I'm not entirely sure of that ... in German too, there are seabird names translating to "fool" and ""clod" or suchlike.
Indeed, and assuming "loon" is an English example of the same phenomenon based on such reasoning alone is a prime example of folk etymology, a "Just So story" for word origins. As it happens English has such names also (e.g., "booby") but according to the linguists "loon" isn't one of them. The following is from the OED, the single most authoritative source for the etymology of English words.
If 'loon' does derive from old Norse it is odd that it wasn't adopted in what is now the United Kingdom. Norse Vikings settled the east of England not to mention the northern isles. They left us a legacy of words and names such as gat/gatan appearing as 'gate' on several streets in York where there are no gates, and fors meaning a waterfall appearing as 'force' as in High Force on Teeside. I also noticed when I worked for a Swedish company that their name for baby is ban which not far from the use of 'bairn' in the north-east of England. There are many examples of place names deriving from Viking times too such as names ending -by, like Whitby, and Selby not to mention those ending in -thorpe.
So I wonder why 'loon' wasn't adopted here?
Hi Fugl,
I'm not entirely sure of that ... in German too, there are seabird names translating to "fool" and ""clod" or suchlike.
Regards,
Henning
Didn't know about the fors/force connection before.. ..
I wonder how did the loon killed the eagle? My guess the loon was diving and hit the eagle while resurfacing from underwater. Otherwise the eagle would have seen it and avoided it.
Had to be something like that. If the loon resurfaced to one side of the down-rushing eagle it could have quickly jabbed in and out with minimal danger to itself. Just its good luck—and the eagle’s bad—that it hit a vital spot.