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Robin Orange-breast
What’s in a name? Sometimes an eye-opening plunge into history.
© Martha de Jong-Lantink CC
Look closely and you’ll see: the European Robin’s breast isn’t red. It’s actually a distinctly orange color. So why “Redbreast” and not, you know, “Orange-breast”? It may be because the word “orange” just wasn’t an option when the bird was named. Oranges — the fruit — first arrived in England in the 1300s. But it wasn’t until the 1500s that the word “orange” was used in England to describe a color. By the time “orange” entered wide-spread use, Redbreast was established as the bird’s name.
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Robin Orange-breast?
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
[European Robin song, https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/120050821, 0.40-.42 and 0.47-.49]
Consider the European Robin. Europe’s robin is a familiar songbird of English gardens. It has long been known by nicknames: from the mid-1500s as Robin Redbreast and, for centuries earlier, simply Redbreast.
But if you look closely, the European Robin’s breast isn’t red. It’s actually a distinctly orange color. So why “Redbreast” and not, you know, “Orange-breast”?
It may be because the word “orange” just wasn’t an option when the bird was named. Oranges — the fruit — first arrived in England in the 1300s. But it wasn’t until the 1500s that the word “orange” was used in England to describe a color. The English word came from a French word, which was derived from an even earlier Arabic or Persian word, where the fruit first came from.
By the time “orange” entered wide-spread use, Redbreast was long established as the bird’s name. And traditional names tend to stick. “Robin”, a common nickname, was added later.
And in the New World, the name stuck, too. Early settlers in North America named the similar orange-breasted birds they encountered here, the American* Robin.
[American Robin call, [https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/115368551, 0.01-.03]
Today’s show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by K Haddad ML120050821 and P Marvin ML115368551.
BirdNote’s theme composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler; Managing Producer: Jason Saul; Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
© 2019 Tune In to Nature.org February 2019 Narrator: Michael Stein
ID# EURROB-02-2019-02-12 EURROB-02
References: https://www.etymonline.com/word/robin
http://mentalfloss.com/article/29942/which-came-first-orange-color-or-o…
Re history of name
http://tailsofbirding.blogspot.com/2011/07/robin-redbreast.html?m=1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_robin
Bob Sundstrom
Writer
Michael Stein
NarratorSights & Sounds
