turdus (Latin)
Where does "turdus" come from?
The Latin word 'turdus', meaning thrush, traces its roots back to the Proto-Indo-European term '*trosdos'. This ancient root word serves as a common ancestor for various bird-related terms across many languages, including the Russian 'drozd', the Welsh 'drudwy', and the Lithuanian 'strazdas'. Over millennia, this linguistic thread has connected diverse cultures through their shared identification of these field birds.
Full etymology tree
- turdus (Latin), 'thrush, fieldfare'
- inherited *torzdos (Proto-Italic)
- inherited *trosdos (Proto-Indo-European)
- inherited *torzdos (Proto-Italic)
Descendants and derived words
- strudz (Aromanian)
- sturdzu (Aromanian)
- tord (Catalan)
- tord (Catalan)
- turdiform (English)
- turdine (English)
- tordo (Galician)
- tordo (Italian)
- tordo (Portuguese)
- sturz (Romanian)
- tordo (Spanish)
- tordo (Spanish)
Updated June 2026
Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris