Words for “puffin”
A puffin is an auk of the genus Fratercula with a colourful beak. I recently looked the word up on Wiktionary and the translations amused me, so here are some of them.
- Czech
- papuchalk
- Danish
- søpapegøje (literally “sea-parrot”)
- Faroese/Icelandic/Old Norse
- lundi
- French
- macareux moine (cf macreuse “scoter”), or perroquet de mer (“sea-parrot”)
- Galician
- Wiktionary says tabuela which is a lapwing. Wikipedia says arao papagaio or aro de altura (“guillemot parrot” or “guillemot of the deep”). I don’t know whether arao or aro is the better spelling.
- German
- Papageitaucher (Atlantic puffin, literally “parrot-diver”)
- Italian
- pulcinella di mare (from the commedia dell’arte character Pulcinella)
- Manx
- pibbin
(although pibbin Vanninagh is a Manx shearwater, literally “Manx puffin”, and pibbin vane is a fulmar, literally “white puffin”) - Polish
- maskonur
- Portuguese
- papagaio-do-mar (again, “sea-parrot”)
- Russian
- топо́рик topórik (“small axe”) (specifically the tufted puffin)
- Russian
- ту́пик túpik “little dullard” (don’t confuse with тупи́к tupík, “dead end”)
- Scots
- tammie norrie
- Scottish Gaelic
- buthaid
- Swedish
- lunnefågel, with fågel meaning “bird”; I guess the first part is related to the Faroese/Icelandic/Old Norse.
Bonus: in English, a colony of puffins is a puffinry and a puffin chick is a puffling.
