Have you ever wondered why it is that some ducks have the word “duck” in their English name while others don’t?

Maybe you have to be a bird nerd like us to ponder that question, but ponder it we did recently.

Yesterday, we were taking in views of North America’s smallest duck, the green-winged teal, in a wetland not far from home. This is the time of year when lots of green-winged teal migrate north through Maine on their way to their extensive breeding grounds across Canada and Alaska. Green-winged teal do have a green patch in their wing, as suggested by their name, but it’s not something that is particularly noticeable except in flight at close range.

What we were struck by, as we watched the birds at the wetland, were the gleaming rufous heads of the males, inset with a bright emerald green patch starting at the back of the eye and curving down to the nape. The gray body, with its distinctive white vertical stripe, was another striking feature from a distance.

As we were putting the observation into eBird and reading through the list of waterfowl, we got to wondering why “teal” ae known as “teal” instead of some kind of duck, like other ducks? In fact, we soon realized, among North American duck species, at least, there are actually more ducks that don’t have the word “duck” in their name then do.

Consider that most familiar of ducks, the mallard. While, like Cher and Madonna, it is honored with its own single-word name (not a particularly common practice among English bird names here in the U.S., at least), it is not alone. Other single-word duck names include gadwall, canvasback, redhead, and bufflehead. Other ducks that don’t carry the “duck” part of the name include pintails, wigeons, shoveler, scaups, eiders, scoters, goldeneyes, and mergansers.

Canvasbacks, redheads, shovelers, pintails, and goldeneyes make some sense because they are descriptive in the English language of something about the appearance of the birds.

But “mallard?”

One of the reasons some of these birds carry these names that don’t seem to make any particular sense to us today is because they are species that also occur in England and the rest of Europe. These names trace back to various European cultural traditions and languages. Over time, the names became commonly associated with the birds in the English language prior to or about the same time European colonizers and early naturalists were arriving in North America. These were some of the few birds that the early colonizers recognized as the same species they were familiar with in Europe.

The word “mallard” is apparently derived from an Old French word “mallart” or “malart” or “maslard” (the latter according to a very thorough 1980 publication called “The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds”). That publication claims that the word derives from the Old French word “masle,” meaning “male” in English. Versions of the word are known to have been in use since the 1300s.

The name “eider” comes from an Old Norse word. “Wigeon” comes from Middle French dating back to at least the 1500s. The origin of the name “gadwall” has apparently been lost to history, but we know it was used as early as 1676 by the British ornithologist Francis Willughby.

Then there’s “teal.”  This word dates back to at least the 1300s and derives from medieval English, which originated from Middle Dutch, which itself may have Germanic origins. All that appears to be known is that it was used to refer to this small, freshwater duck. But why? It’s especially curious because versions of the word “duck” itself date back to at least the 1100s.  Why did some of the ducks get a special unique name that did not include the word “duck” and others did not?

We don’t have answers to these questions, but you can be sure we’ll keep musing on them as we watch the ducks (and teal and scaup and wigeon and…) migrate through over the coming weeks.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is Senior Director of Communications at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).