Q: Why does a Saw-whet Owl NOT sound like a saw being whetted?

A: Because John James Audubon fumbled the name.


At least that's the fairly persuasive explanation I've run into,
most recently in Julio de la Torre's text of _Owls: Their Life
and Behavior_, with photos by Art Wolfe (1990).

A boiled-down version of the story goes like this. "Saw-whet"
is the New Englander's anglicized pronunciation of the French
and French-speaking Canadian word "la chouette," a name for any
small owl.

Audubon had heard the New Englanders' word for their small owl
(_Aegolius acadicus_) before settling in Kentucky in 1811 and
later buying a grist mill there. Apparently, Audubon hadn't
actually heard the call of the New Englanders' Saw-whet Owl, so
when he did hear metallic scraping sounds coming from inside his
mill, metallic sounds that he attributed to an owl that he didn't
see, he recalled the New Englander's odd name for their owl. His
unseen and unmellifluous owl was one of these.

As de la Torre puts it, Audubon figured "that the reason folks up
north called _their_ bird by that funny name was that they made the
same noise as his midsummer Kentucky day-calling, mill-roosting
raspy-voiced owl!"

Audubon's prestige, of course, helped establish the misnomer and
the mistaken idea of the real call of the Saw-whet Owl.

De la Toore goes on to note that Audubon's mill foreman, who did
actually see the owl, indicated that it was really a Barn Owl.

This explanation sounds reasonable to me. And some of its main
points--like the French provenance and New England adaptation
of the term "la chouette"--are susceptible to research.

Maybe in another 150 years the pronunciation will get twisted
again by the natural processes of language change, and our bird-
chasing heirs will be listening for the call of the So-what Owl.

--cheers, Jim Lyles



---------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Lyles jrlyles at eskimo.com
Tacoma, WA <Editing isn't pretty.> jrlyles at usgs.gov