By the 17th century the bird's real identity had been forgotten: it began to be interpreted either as a cormorant, a common bird in the area, or as a "lever". In 1611 the municipal records describe the mayor receiving a plate "marked with the Cormorant, the Townes Armes", while in 1668 the Earl of Derby gifted the town a silver-gilt mace engraved with a "leaver". In his 1688 work "The Academie of Armorie", Randle Holme records the arms of Liverpool as a blue "lever" upon a silver field. Holme takes this word to be an adaptation of the German "loffler" or Dutch "lepler/lefler", both referring to the spoonbill. It is possible that these continental words were adopted for the bird in Liverpool's arms as they made a fitting allusion to the name "Liverpool". Around the same time the broom sprig in the bird's beak was reinterpreted as a branch of laver, also on account of the similarity of the word to the city's name.