The pelican is no woodpecker, but in his famous translation of the Bible, St. Jerome, thinking it pecked wood like a woodpecker, named the bird pelican, from the Greek word pelekys, or "axe beak." this name stuck, as do many legends about the bird, including one that it resurects it dead young by feeding them its blood, which Shakespeare alluded to in King Lear. Wrote Dixon Lanire Merrith in his poem "The Pelican"(1910): A wonderful bird is the pelican His bill will hold more that his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I'm danmed if i can see how the helican
Source: QBP Encylopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, By Robert Hendrickson