Swift - OE *swift

There is no record of the Old English word for swift (Apus apus), if, that is, they even differentiated it from similar-looking species such as martins and swallows in the hirundine family. The name is not recorded before the 17th century. However, swift did exist as an Old English word, an adjective with the exact meaning it retains today. The record below, then, from a 10th-century Gloucester charter might be the single surviving piece of evidence for the argument that medieval people did use this word as a name for the bird. Swiftan beorh means ‘swift's hill’, but there is one record in another charter of Swift as an Anglo-Saxon personal name, so it’s certainly possible that this landmark refers to a person. We cannot say more than that; the record presents an outside chance that the name already existed in early England. It’s worth pointing out, too, however, that the swift is often given as the answer to a riddle in the 10th-century Exeter Book (a colossal and very precious manuscript of Old English poetry) which, as yet, has no firm consensus beyond the fact that the answer seems to be some sort of bird. Swift, though, has been a repeatedly suggested answer for many readers and scholars, however, and if correct, this then provides further evidence for the existence of Old English swift as a bird name. As with the place-name, however, the fact is we’ll never known because there are no answers to the Exeter Book Riddles!

Swiftan beorh, a landmark described in a 10th cen. charter relating to Calmesden, Gloucester.

Sources (see ‘About’ page for the full bibliography): Hooke, ‘Bird, Beasts’; langscape.org.uk.