The Catalan linguist Joan Coromines1 derives Spanish urraca 'magpie (Pica pica)' from the female personal name Urraca2, popular during the High Middle Ages in the Christian
kingdoms of Northern Spain (Asturias/León, Castile, Navarre, Aragon). However, this hypothesis not only doesn't give us any
insight about the etymology, but it also won't explain the initial consonant
found in the dialectal variants burraca, furraca, hurraca /xuráka/,
zurraca /θuráka/.
I'd link the Spanish word to Basque urra (B) 'expression to call hens and pidgeons; birds in general, especially hens and pidgeons' < *burra 'hen', with *bu > u3 like in Iberian. By contrast, Paleo-Basque, lacking of such a stop in its sound inventory, adopted it as /p/4, hence purra (G, HN, S, R, Z), furra (B, G, HN) 'expression to call hens', with the expressive variants tturra /cura/ (L, LN, Z), turra (L, LN). There's also Galician churra /tʃúra/ 'hen; expression to call hens'.
A diminutive form *burra-ka would be then the source of the forms burraca, urraca. In Spanish, the initial labial became a voiceless bilabial fricative *φ, variously reflected as /f/, /x/ or /θ/5. As in the case of most names of birds, the utlimate origin of this word would be onomatopoeic.
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1 J. Coromines (1973, 2008): Breve
diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, p. 564.
2 There's also the Galician variant Orraca.
3 Possibly through an intermediate stage *wu.
4 Cfr. Asturian utre 'vulture' ~ Gascon botre, butre > Basque putre (G), futre (HN).
5 Spanish *φ became aspirated as /h/ (except before /l, r, w/) at an early date, although the aspiration was later lost in most dialects. This is why the genuine form must have been hurraca.
4 Cfr. Asturian utre 'vulture' ~ Gascon botre, butre > Basque putre (G), futre (HN).
5 Spanish *φ became aspirated as /h/ (except before /l, r, w/) at an early date, although the aspiration was later lost in most dialects. This is why the genuine form must have been hurraca.
