"I come from haunts of coot and hern." (Tennyson, The Brook, 1. 1.)
The Old French dim. heronceau also passed into English—
"I wol nat tellen of hir strange sewes (courses),
Ne of hir swannes, ne of hire heronsewes."
(F, 67.)
As a surname it has been assimilated to the local, and partly identical, Hearnshaw (Chapter XII). Some commentators go to this word to explain Hamlet's use of handsaw-
"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw" (Hamlet, ii. 2).
When the author's father was a boy in Suffolk eighty years ago, the local name for the bird was pronounced exactly like answer. Grew is Fr. grue, crane, Lat. grus, gru-. Butter, Fr. butor, "a bittor" (Cotgrave), is a dialect name for the bittern, called a "butter-bump" by Tennyson's Northern Farmer (1. 31). Culver is Anglo-Sax. culfre, a pigeon—
"Columba, a culver, a dove"
(Cooper)—
hence the local Culverhouse. Dove often becomes Duff. Gaunt is sometimes a dialect form of gannet, used in Lincolnshire of the crested grebe. Popjoy may have been applied to the successful archer who became king of the popinjay for the year. The derivation of the word, Old Fr. papegai, whence Mid. Eng. papejay—