Song thrush "Turdus", is the Latin for "thrush", and the specific epithet refers to a character in Greek mythology, Philomela, who had her tongue cut out, but was changed into a singing bird. Her name is derived from the Ancient Greek "Φιλο" "philo-" ("loving"), and "μέλος" "melos" ("song"). The dialect names "throstle" and "mavis" both mean "thrush", being related to the German "drossel" and French "mauvis" respectively. "Throstle" dates back to at least the fourteenth century and was used by Chaucer in the "Parliament of Fowls". Mavis is derived via Middle English "mavys" and Old French "mauvis" from Middle Breton "milhuyt" meaning
Hermit thrush its song indicates that they are related by harmonic simple integer pitch ratios, like most human music and unlike the songs of other birds that have been similarly examined. The hermit thrush is the state bird of Vermont. Walt Whitman construes the hermit thrush as a symbol of the American voice, poetic and otherwise, in his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," one of the fundamental texts in the American literary canon. "A Hermit Thrush" is the name of a poem by the American poet Amy Clampitt. A hermit thrush appears in the fifth section