Since I came to a basic understanding of the classical languages, I’ve also become interested in the Linnaean (some say Scientific) names of birds. A Blue Jay crashed our feeder today, scattering the Passer Domesticii (Sparrows of the House). I’d never learned his Linnaean anme so I looked up and found it is Cyanocitta cristata.
Kύανος (ku-an-os) is ancient Greek for the color we call dark blue, cyan in English. Kιττα (kit-ta) is the ancient name of the bird commonly called the Eurasian Jay which modern Greeks call Kissa. The “ss” is a Koine Greek transformation of what would be “tt” in Attic. Enlightenment scientists got their Greek from Erasmus who was a snob for the “purity” of Attic so the name of the Blue Jay comes to us with “tt” instead of “ss.”
The most famous occurrence of “tt” versus “ss” is in Xenophon’s Anabasis when the soldiers finally reach the Black Sea after their long cross-country journey and shout, “Thalatta! Thalatta!” “The Sea! The Sea!” Even though the surviving copies of Xenophon read “tt,” the phrase is often repeated with the “ss” of modern Greek. James Joyce makes a point of this in Ulysses when one of the characters says, “You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta!” Since Joyce was keen on Attic I wonder why he didn’t title the book Odysseus instead of Ulysses, the later being the Latin corruption of the hero’s name.
The second part of the Linnaean name for the Blue Jay is Latin for “crest.” So the bird is literally “a dark blue jay with a crest.”
Strangely there is neither Kissa nor Kitta in the Linnaean name for the Eurasian Jay. Its called Garrulus glandarius which in Latin is “Chattering acorn-er” Glans is the Latin for acorn or nut. Since “glands” look a lot like nuts that is where we got our English word.
Jays were not only considered noisy by the ancients, but were also famous for “omnivorous gluttony” according to the Greek poet Aristophanes.
Now for the connection to pregnancy.
Greek medical texts use the word ἁκίττα (ha-kit-ta) to describe the way pregnant women want to eat copious quantities of strange food. Whereas an ἀ (a) at the beginning of a Greek word indicates a lack of something, a ἁ (ha) indicates unity of things. So pregnant women and Jays are alike according to the best medical references of the patriarchal ancient world. Men today might agree but they would never be allowed to say such a thing.
