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Sparrow - OE spearwe, succa, sugga, sugge, sucga

The archetypal small bird, in early times as now it seems, since in one glossary of bird names, the tenth-century Abbot of Eynsham, Ælfric, translates Latin passer (sparrow, and from which we get passerine) as spearewa oððe lytel fugel ‘sparrow or other little birds’. The name is assumed to be of Proto-Indo-European origin, but the meaning of the word remains unknown. Somewhat surprisingly, given how very common house sparrow must have been in earlier centuries, familiar in domestic locations as well as in biblical texts, spearwe itself doesn’t turn up in surviving town or village names. There are a few minor place-names (included in the list below), but few of these have early records and none go back to the early medieval period. We do get another word, sugge (see the entry for dunnock for more on this name, the ‘hedge-sugge’) that is likely to have been a general term for ‘small birds’ too, and these may have referred to sparrows in some place names, as perhaps fugel ‘bird’ might have done when it turns up in some circumstances.

Sparrow Fields Farm (lost, St Martins-without-Worcester, Worcs)

Sparrowfeld (lost, Cuddington, Surrey)

Suckley (Worcs)

Sudbrooke (Lincs)

Sugnall (Staffs)

Stretton Sugwas (Herts)

Sparrows (or small, sparrow-like species) appear in charters relating to the following places: Abingdon, Oxon (10th cen.), Kineton, Warks (10th cen.), West Orchard, Dor (10th cen.).

Sources (see ‘About’ page for the full bibliography): Watts, Cambridge Dictionary; Ekwall, Oxford Dictionary; epns.nottingham.ac.uk; Gelling and Cole, Landscape of Place-Names; langscape.org.uk.

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