Grouse - OE cocc, hana, henn

Sadly it is impossible to know what specific names medieval people gave to grouse species, other than the likelihood that the general terms used for domestic fowl and birds generally (see the page on ‘Birds’) were also applied to those families of birds we now group under the title ‘game’. Rail and crakes perhaps came in broad category as well. Thus, it is possible that a number of the general terms found in the place-names on the ‘Bird’ page of this site referred specifically to grouse. By the time we get to the mate Middle Ages, names such as hethcock ‘heath-cock’ and morecock/morehen ‘moor-cock/hen’ appear, which do sound as though the refer to grouse species, although OE mor referred widely to marshy, swampy habitats as well as the heatherlands we tend to think of as ‘moor’ today (hence, the eventual application of moorhen to Gallinule chloropus, a wetland species).

The one exception to the generality of possible grouse reference in place-names might be the group of minor and field names given below that probably derive from Old Norse leikr, meaning ‘play or ‘game’, and apparently used to describe a group of displaying male grouse birds from early on. We still call this grouse courtship ritual a lek today. Most of these names, sadly, do not have early records to prove origins, but, like Cockshutt (see the ‘woodcock’ page), the survival of so many cocc-leikr-type names suggests a likely commonality between them, and the northern upland location of many of these places is where we would expect to find grouse (nearly all of them are in Cumbria).

Cocklake (Som)

Field names: Cocklade, Threshfield (Yorks), Cocklake, Mallerstang (Cumb) and Tebay (Cumb), Great and Little Cocklake, Dufton (Cumb), Cocklake Dale, Asby (Cumb), Cocklake Rigg, Kaber (Cumb), Cock Lakes, Denton (Yorks) and Kettlewell (Yorks), Cocklate, Lambrigg (Cumb), Cocklayc, Millom (Cumb), Cocklaw Fell, Windermere (Cumbs), Cockplaie, Kirkandrews (Cumb).

*Names in italics above denote those places for which there are historic records, but which are now lost.

Sources (see ‘About’ page for the full bibliography): Watt, Cambridge Dictionary; Cavill, English Field-Names.