mierlă

Forms

mierlă f (plural mierle)^[1] Regional and old forms are miarlă and mirlă; a Transylvanian song has „Numai mirla din pădure” “only the blackbird from the forest”.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin merula (“blackbird”).^{[5][2][6][7][1][8]} It survives in all four branches: Aromanian njerlã, Megleno-Romanian ńierla and Istro-Romanian merlę.^{[5][9][10][11]} The Romance cognates include Italian merla and merlo, Dalmatian miarla, French merle, Catalan merla, Spanish mirla and Portuguese melro.^[5][8]

Latin /e/ under stress should have given a form with ⟨ia⟩, as herba gave iarbă; the vowel ⟨ie⟩ has been explained by the influence of forms with an unstressed diphthong such as mierloi (Candrea and Densusianu), by the plural mierle (Pascu), or by Albanian mierlë (Pascu again).^[5] Old and regional miarlă has the expected vowel.^[2]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *mesVlā-, related to Welsh mwyalch, Old High German amsla and Old English ōsle, and cites Schrijver's view that it is a loan from a non-Indo-European substrate of Europe.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1583.^[7] As a woman's name, Mierla is recorded in Moldavia in 1636.^[13] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicon Lex.St. of about 1660–1670 has the common noun.^[2][14]

Semantic evolution

A recipe of 1749 names the birds among the game eaten with a juniper-berry stew, „cu sturzi, mierle și alte păsăruici” “with thrushes, blackbirds and other small birds”.^[4] Compounds name related birds: mierlă sură or mierlă gulerată is the ring ouzel, mierlă de piatră the rock thrush, and mierlă de pârâu the dipper.^[2][6] The male is mierloi, and Oltenia names a grape variety mierlesc.^[5][7] The word also gave personal names and surnames such as Mierlea, Mierlan and Mierlescu.^[13]

Timeline

• 1583 – the first record cited by Tiktin.^[7]
• 1636 – Mierla, a woman's name in Moldavia.^[13]
• c. 1660–1670 – in the Slavonic–Romanian lexicon Lex.St.^[2][14]
• 1749 – mierle among game birds in a recipe.^[4]
• 1825 – the Lexicon of Buda has it under the spelling merlă.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. The blackbird (Turdus merula), a forest songbird, the male black with a yellow bill, the female brown.^[6][2][1]
2. In compounds, other thrushes and similar birds: mierlă sură or gulerată the ring ouzel (Turdus torquatus), mierlă de pârâu the dipper.^[6][2]

Word family

• mierloi
• mierlesc

Related words

• Aromanian njerlã
• Latin merula

Usage notes

Mierlă is also a surname.^[1][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 8
3. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 74
4. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mierlă
5. ^ a b c d e Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. mierlă
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 652
7. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. mierlă
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5534
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 796
10. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 274
11. ^ Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 124
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c Constantinescu, N. A. (1963), Dicționar onomastic romînesc, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. mierlă
14. ^ a b Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. mierlă
15. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 391
16. ^ Iordan, Iorgu (1983), Dicționar al numelor de familie românești, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 305