The real question is whether the makers of Wingspan will send me new cards :D
What’s really interesting is that birds kind of have ‘official’ common names whereas plants don’t, with common species often having multiple common names. I think creating new ones is a good idea for these cases, but it’s not like people will stop the crossover on iNat with the old names. Maybe have them as two separate languages - English (New) and English (Historic) and let people choose.
I do see the issue with the whole thing as a local botanist decided he wanted to change all the common names to match scientific names and i thought it was awful. Cottonwood had to be a poplar, butternut had to be a walnut, etc. It felt like cultural erasure. Though some cultural things are better done away with. I just really don’t like species named after individuals, and usually the individuals tend to be problematic humans for whatever reason anyway. Maybe all of us are problematic humans, all the more reason to not name plants after us. Maybe we can change the name ‘creeping charlie’ too (just kidding)
I am opposed to “fixing” any of these people names, until we have solved obviously stupid things like the Grey Wagtail being mainly recognisable in its UK range by how yellow it is.
At least a wholesale change will save the birding community from the pointless debate over which historical figures should be put on trial based on 21st century U.S. mores. However, to avoid the confusion that others have noted, they should not assign bird names based on plumage that varies by sex, season, or is variable. What does that leave?
I vote to rename the Steller’s Jay as the Stellar Jay. Most non-birders call it that anyway, and it’s stellar at robbing campsites.
That doesn’t leave much to work with, other than location, habitat, and some morphological features or vocalizations that don’t vary with the season, gender, etc. Lots of bird names that don’t use a human’s name are not that descriptive. Saying some bird is a “Western” or “Eastern” whatever isn’t all that helpful. Somehow we still manage to remember the names and ID using them.
But speaking of eponymous names, who are these guys Bob O’Link and Dick Cissel? Never heard of them. Surely they should be expunged from the bird names list. ;-)
Specifically, this would include all 144 English names on the NACC list and 111 additional species found only on the SACC list that have a genitive possessive construction (i.e., -’s), as well as the five eponymous bird names without a genitive construction: Blackburnian Warbler, Montezuma Oropendola, Montezuma Quail, Barolo Shearwater, and Zenaida Dove.
The committee also recommends that, in addition to birds named after people, three names with derogatory or culturally unsuitable references or origins should also be changed. These are Eskimo Curlew, Flesh-footed Shearwater, and Inca Dove. Thus, the total is 263 names to be changed, representing about 5.5% of the English bird names that the AOS oversees.
This is the scale of the proposal - 263 names! I’m too old to relearn that many
Here are 2 free suggestions for the committee: Eskimo curlew > extinct curlew; Inca dove > ruffled dove
Lots of good suggestions for name changes, please keep them coming! Whether or not this proposal is ultimately a good idea, I love the creative response from the iNat community!!
This will be something people will have to adjust to. But, we can still go out and enjoy the birds.
The men whose names will be taken off bird names still contributed to ornithology. They will remain in the history books.
(Are their any bird names with a woman’s name in it?)
On a related note: the U.S. National Audubon Society decided not to change its name back in May. I read that three board members resigned because of that decision. I also read that a number of local chapters changed their names.
This is necessary. The three Steller’s Jay “subspecies” really don’t look that alike and their full species status is a long time coming. The name changes is necessary to differentiate the new taxa from the old one, especially since, as I mentioned, common names are basically filling the role of scientific names in ornithology.
Not necessarily limited to birds. As an undergrad, I did a whole project on Peperomia hernadiifolia because of its name.
And some people actually remember birds that way without being aware that they are named after an invidual. The “Stellar Jay” was one of the few birds that my mom easily recognized and remembered. What would we change it to? Black-crested Jay?
I guess that depends on how you define looking that alike. It would make sense if there was a sharp morphological divide; but do they not intergrade across the geographic range? One could argue that the different Dark-eyed Junco subspecies don’t look that alike either, but there are reasons why they are no longer considered separate species.
Afaik there is little to no intergration between the Steller’s Jay subspecies, hence supporting the split. It’s actually really clear cut IMO. This is contrast to a situation like Dark-eyed Junco.
Related to these two, I always wonder about Black-capped & Caroline chickadees, because these do intergrade pretty reliably (afaik) where they overlap and visually they are really hard to tell apart.
Laws of nature (I’m sure Kepler and Newton had some unacceptable beliefs) and organic chemical name reactions (who the ## were Krebs and Dies and Alder, anyway?). Actually, the latter might be a good thing - I might have passed Organic Chemistry the first time around if there hadn’t been all those names to memorize!
I’m surprised how many people jump on this with great enthusiasm, without considering both sides of the topic. Keeping in mind this started due to issues with the previous name of thick-billed longspur, which commemorated a Confederate general and so was deemed to be a poor honouring of someone who likely supported slavery and discrimination. I think this was a good decision. What I’m more questionable on is that the committee has decided that there’s no way to moderate and find proof to support that other honorifics (or eponyms) are of people who are innocent, and so they are pushing to sweep the lot. On the basis of “guilty until proven innocent, but we won’t make an effort to prove them innocent”. I find this a bit of a cop-out reasoning.
It’s pushed now under the banner of “bird names for the birds”, but that’s not what the core issue is. People are also saying this will create better stability in common names (which are already very stable, and changing them is unstable), and say that it will encourage more people to care about birds (which I think is difficult to justify), and that it creates a more comfortable and inclusive birding environment (to which I partly disagree, because no one cared this much about these names being racist or inappropriate until the last few years).
All in all, I’m concerned this is not being taken in a civil and logical direction discussion-wise, and too many people are jumping on this without thinking about it properly. “Bird names for the bird”/descriptive names is the only line of thought that I really think is unanimously in support of this. But of course, you can’t change scientific names, so they’ll always be honouring those people in the end.
This is exactly the same way that I feel. It honestly feels very forced, it’s going to cause issues, solve none, and make a permanent change that was honestly very political. I’m not going to go into depth why that is to not cause an argument due to politics because I am not the type that likes to do that. I honestly probably will never use any of these names, I grew up with them, and I’ll use them for my entire life, and I am still young. As much as I like the name change of Gray Jay to Canada Jay, I still use gray jay 99/100 times. It’s a habit, and when people get into the habit of calling a Cooper’s hawk a Cooper’s hawk, the likelihood of that changing is low. It also most likely won’t help anyone know the difference between the two unless we also changed the sharp-shinned hawk in a certain way that helps to identify both better, but that is going to open a whole new can of worms. There’s really no good solution here that will make everyone happy, but I agree with the part that I’ve never met anyone who was genuinely offended by these names. I honestly think we need to start with names that actually do not accurately describe the bird that gives a description of it in the name, for example ring-necked duck, we can all agree that it should be renamed to ring-billed duck, but for now it’s not getting changed.
