The story
- Middle English · inherited fromchaffynch
- English todaychaffinch
From Middle English chaffynch, chaffynche, caffynche, equivalent to chaff + finch. However, more recently the first element has been argued to derive from the same root as Old English cæfed (“ornamented”) and cæfing (“hair-ornament”), thus meaning "ornamented finch, colourful finch".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.