The paper studies semantically motivated ornitonyms from semantic and
morphological aspects. The analysis suggests that the biggest number of ornitonyms are
motivated by the colour of a bird’s feathers and by a bird’s appearance. Apart from a bird’s
appearance, names are also motivated by a bird’s food, its specific sound, its movement and
behaviour, as well as its habitat. Some ornitonyms are motivated by people’s beliefs.
Morphological analysis shows that the biggest number of ornitonyms are made by
adding suffixes to nouns and adjectives (-ar, -ka, -aš, -ica, -aljka, - avka, and similar). A
smaller number is made by combining affixation and agreement. A number of ornitonyms
is made from lexis belonging to general lexical corpus and undergoing metaphorical
transfer of meaning on the ground of similarity.У раду се разматрају механизми постанка семантички мотивисаних орнитонима, истражују се особине које су мотивисале одређени назив и показују се најфреквентнији творбени модели
