Sibagu.com now has a page on how the meaning of 莺/鶯 changed from ‘oriole’ to ‘warbler’ under the influence of Japanese. This topic was covered briefly at a LanguageHat post in January concerning Sinitic Borrowing; now the background evidence is laid out in detail at the page ‘Of Orioles and Warblers’.
The entry at LanguageHat reads in part:
In looking at bird names, I’ve … discovered that quite a few Japanese bird names have been borrowed into Chinese… based on kanji usage — including cases where the Japanese applied existing characters to different birds from the original Chinese, or where they created new characters that didn’t originally exist in Chinese. All of these have been taken into Chinese as though they were Chinese words.
One example that mystified me for a long time was 鶯 yīng. In Chinese this traditionally refers to the oriole or 黃鶯 huáng-yīng. But modern Chinese dictionaries give as a second meaning ‘member of the Sylviidae’ (i.e., warblers). The extension of the word for ‘oriole’ to the warblers makes a certain kind of sense, but is still mystifying — until you look at the Japanese.
What seems to have happened is that the Japanese took the character 鶯 and applied it to their own cultural equivalent of the oriole, namely the uguisu (scientifically known as the Cettia diphone), a bird celebrated in Japanese poetry for its beautiful song. Thus, the word uguisu came to be written with the character 鴬 in Japanese. The uguisu eventually gave its name to the whole family of Sylviidae, or 鴬科. Under Japanese influence, Chinese ornithologists then appear to have applied the character 鶯/莺 to the Sylviidae and thus to the many species of warbler. Since 鶯/莺 is an old Chinese character, this kind of influence from Japanese goes right under the radar of most Chinese.
There is nothing new or original about this finding. The information is available to anyone who is willing to look in public and open sources. What is startling is how badly Chinese dictionaries perform in dealing with this. The 1978 edition of the 现代汉语词典 xiàndài hànyǔ cídiǎn (‘Modern Chinese Dictionary’), the standard dictionary for everyday usage in Mainland China, defines 莺 yīng as follows:
莺（鶯、鸎）yīng 鸟类的一种，身体小，多为褐色或暗绿色，嘴短而尖。叫的声音清脆。吃昆虫，对农业和林业有益。
(Definition): ‘A kind of bird, small in size, often brown or dark-green in colour, with a short sharp bill. Call is clear and sharp. Eats insects, is beneficial to agriculture and forestry’.
There is no reference to the original meaning of ‘oriole’ at all; sylviid warbler is the only meaning according to this entry. To find the original meaning of ‘oriole’, we must look up the entry for 黄莺 huáng-yīng, which will redirect us to 黄鹂 huáng-lí, which appears to have become the standardised name for the oriole.
The 1996 edition (3rd revised edition) of the dictionary adds an example of usage to 莺 yīng:
【莺歌燕舞】yīng gē yàn wǔ 黄莺歌唱，燕子飞舞。形容大好春光或比喻大好形势：大地春回，～。
(Definition): ‘Yellow warblers sing, swallows fly. Describes a delightful scene of spring or acts as a simile for a delightful situation: spring returns to the land, ~.’
The problem is that this example is quite unrelated to the main entry — in fact, it refers to the oriole! The inclusion of this as an example of 莺 yīng is amazingly sloppy lexicography. Instead of trying to sweep the problem under the carpet, the dictionary should give two meanings, something like:
1. (literary) Oriole (Black-naped Oriole), q.v.
2. (scientific) Birds belonging to the Sylviidae, dark green or brown in colour, with a sharp, clear call, beneficial to forestry.
Indeed, the large 12-volume 漢語大詞典 hànyǔ dà-cídiǎn actually sets out the two meanings, but its treatment is less than satisfactory (sense (1) is irrelevant to this discussion and is omitted):
鶯 [莺] ［yīng…] (2)黄莺。又称黄鹂、仓庚等。《禽经》“倉庚、黧黃，黃鳥也” 晋张华注:“今謂之黃鶯、黃鸝是也。” 南朝梁丘迟《与陈伯之书》:“暮春三月，江南草長，雜花生樹，羣鸎亂飛。” 唐温庭筠《南歌子》词:“隔簾鶯百囀，感君心。” 清王韬《淞隐慢录･合记珠琴事》:“每一引吭，聲如春曉之新鶯。” (3)鸟纲莺科鸟类的通称。种类较多。体型大多较麻雀为小，羽毛多绿褐色，灰褐色。主食昆虫，为农林益鸟。
(Definitions): ‘(2) huáng-yīng [‘yellow warbler’]. Also known as huánglí, cānggēng, etc. [Four examples from ancient texts]. (3) The general name for birds of the family Sylviidae in the class Aves. There are many types. Mostly smaller in size than a sparrow, mostly with green-brown or grey-brown plumage. Diet is mainly insects. A beneficial bird for forestry.’
It is left to the user to deduce that sense (2) is literary (four examples from ancient literature) and sense (3) is modern and scientific (scientifically-based definition, no examples from ancient literature).
In an attempt to fix this uncomfortable split, a modern Hong Kong dictionary (中文高級新詞典 zhōngwén gāojí xīn-cídiǎn) adopts a different tack. It gives the following definition:
鶯（莺）
(1) 鳥名，身體小，嘴尖，叫聲清脆動聽。吃害蟲，是益鳥。常見的有黃鶯、柳鶯、夜鶯等。
(1) Bird name; has small body, sharp bill and clear pleasant song. Eats harmful insects, is a beneficial bird. Frequently seen are the oriole, willow warbler, and nightingale.
This treatment broadens the definition of 鶯 yīng to cover small songbirds in general, thus resolving the tension posed by the two separate meanings. Moreover, in addition to the oriole and the sylviid warblers, it also covers the nightingale, a bird known in Chinese as 夜鶯 yè-yīng ‘night oriole’. This name appears to have been coined due to the perception that the nightingale is the Western equivalent of the oriole; it does not appear to owe anything to Japanese.
The creation of a single overarching meaning is satisfying on one level, but less so on another. The new generalised meaning is a melange that doesn’t totally fit the rather different birds that it covers. Rather than characterising the three different types of bird as just different types of 鶯 yīng, it would be preferable to give some indication of the split between literary and modern scientific usage.
The muddle over the two senses of the word 鶯 yīng raises two rather important issues for Chinese lexicography.
1) First, there is a definite need for more attention to be paid to the labelling of usage. It should not be left to the user to figure out whether a particular usage is literary or scientific. The dictionary itself should try and bridge the gap between different levels of usage or different styles. Currently dictionaries have split personalities, as though entries were independently compiled by an ancient scholar and a scientist who haven’t bothered to talk to each another.
2) Secondly, there is a need for Chinese lexicologists to look outside their own narrow tradition in compiling dictionaries. In this case it is quite obvious that neither Classical studies nor modern technical definitions can capture the total meaning and etymology of this word. Chinese scholars may feel that Japanese sources are superfluous in compiling a Chinese dictionary, but in this they are quite wrong. If they are to do their job properly, it is important that they broaden their horizons.