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Thrush - OE scric, throstle, thrysce

The selection of terms applied to thrushes are difficult to distinguish, although it is largely agreed that all are onomatopoeic and, likely, throstle and thrysce did apply to different species—respectively, the song thrush and mistle thrush perhaps. Scric, which of any of the thrush species seems to be most appropriately applied to the call or alarm call of the mistle thrush, is the root of modern ‘shrike’ and related to ‘shriek’ (but scric translates turdus in early English glosses, so it is unclear whether it applied to shrikes as well as thrushes or the name was later applied to shrikes). For the blackbird (OE osle), see the separate page for that bird, although osle place-names are included below for the reason that the name may have applied to thrushes generally as well.

Note: asterisks at the end of names denote ambiguity about the meaning, the bird referent in the name being one possible interpretation).

Ossett (Yorks)*

Owslebury (Hants)

Ozleworth (Glos)*

Shrigley (Ches)

Thrushelton (Dev)

Thrushes appear in charters relating to the following places: Bleadon, Som (10th cen.), Broadway, Worcs (10th cen.), Cutsdean, Glos (10th cen.) Oldberrow, Warks (8th cen.), Ullenhall ,Warks (10th cen., same site as that referenced in the Oldberrow charter).

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