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Once on the book scent, our road could go
forever. In 'Shakespeare's Birds' Peter Goodfellow says "Over the years
two names for the [Blackbird] have fought for supremacy: Although
'blackbird' is first recorded in literature in The Book of St Albans of 1486,
the northern half of Britain favoured 'ouzel' or 'ousel'. .... It is the second
name which Shakespeare uses twice ...'
In any event, the 'standard' English-language name is not, and
is unlikely ever to be again, 'Blackbird'. Christidis and Boles follows
the IOC suggestion of 'Common Blackbird', a demonstrably unsatisfactory piece of
coinage. Monroe & Sibley list 33 different kinds of 'blackbird', many
of them not closely related to this one and no doubt many of them considerably
more common, where they occur, than this chap. M&S use
'Eurasian Blackbird', which I am inclined to think Shakespeare would have
used were he writing plays today. Scanning quibbles may be
referred to Suzanne Edgar, who might well prefer " 'rasian blackbird"
for the iambic mode. (I suppose it's possible, John, that WS might have
gone for " 'wasian", just to keep the etymologists on their toes.)
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