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Jackdaw - OE ca, ceahhe, ceo

The Old English names for jackdaw are all recognisably onomatopoeic (not dissimilar to modern jack-daw!) Ceo (chay-o) was eventually pronounced chow-ff, which gives away what species that name was finally attached to. Ca is the name that most often turns up in place-names for this bird (place-names, in fact, are the only record we have for this name at all).

A note on corvid names: as with raptors, in all likelihood corvid names were transferable among the group and had multi-species application. While a lot of names for the Corvidae family come down to us from Old English, nearly all corresponding very nicely to modern English names, we shouldn’t assume that early people in Britain attached and used the names exactly as we do (or don’t, in fact—many people use the word ‘crow’ very generally, and don’t know a raven from a rook from a jackdaw; even in more scientific contexts we still use ‘crow’ in a general sense). The names are all focused on sound, so it seems corvids, especially the black foursome most easily confused (raven, carrion crow, rook, jackdaw) were most specifically identified according to their calls. Probably, the largest and most distinctive of these four, the raven, with its exalted status in many early cultures, was considered the ‘mother’ bird, as it were, and the other species were perceived as diminutives.

Caber (lost, Cumb)

Cabourne (Lincs)

Cavill (Yorks)

Cawood (Lincs)

Cawood (Yorks)

Kaber (Cumb)

Kigbeare (Dev)

Jackdaws appear in charters relating to the following places: Chelsworth, Suff (10th cen.), Witney, Oxon (10th cen.).

Sources (see ‘About’ page for the full bibliography): Watts, Cambridge Dictionary; Ekwall, Oxford Dictionary; epns.nottingham.ac.uk; langscape.org.uk.

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