For those who do not know, the AOS (American Ornithological Society) has recently announced that they are considering changing the official common names of many bird species, especially birds names after people. I am curious to know what people think of this decision? Personally, I am absolutely ag…

Tagging onto this to add that there is a very stark difference between a name that commemorates someone who believes in / fights to defend a system that deems owning other human beings acceptable (human beings of certain skin tones, on top of that - please don’t think of it as only a ‘small gesture’…

I said small gesture because that was another poster said above. What I would like to see implemented is a some sort of vote. Perhaps all ABA members or eBird users could vote on any potential name change before it is implemented in said place? Assuming the word gets out well and lots of people vot…

To learn the names in the first place. Relearning names is a different matter altogether and one thing I find extremely difficult.

You are sixteen years old. Relearning things in general is what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life.

[image] raymie: I said small gesture because that was another poster said above. Unless someone has edited their post, in which case please disregard this, no one in this thread called it a ‘small gesture’ until you did. The words appear to be yours. You may feel that someone was arguing thi…

No it wasn’t. There are I believe 5 posts above your comment which have been edited from their original text submission. None has ever contained, or been edited to remove the phrase ‘small gesture’. You alone have done so. So unless someone has figured out how to make unlogged edits, that’s not the …

[image] wormwellv: Why should we stick with these names when we could instead use a neutral, descriptive name? Neutral, descriptive names are boring. Calling a species “long-tailed duck” is akin to naming your cat “Boots.” Or for that matter, renaming the Mallard as “green-headed duck.” […

[image] jnstuart: Except for Pyrrhuloxia, which I still can’t spell most of the time. I propose Desert Cardinal. I was just going to add a further thought on my comment about dull descriptive names: Names like Gadwall, Bobolink, and Wandering Tattler feel like they denote more interesting or…

But we forget all those old names are in fact descriptive too, often not plumage but part of song or behaviour, still, they have same kind of meaning as long-tailed duck (which I appreciate as an easy name to learn and quite nice sounding one) it’s just in the result of language evolution we can’t s…

Thoughts on Changing Bird Names

Nature Talk

raymie April 30, 2021, 4:44pm 61

The post must have been edited, I was quoting someone there.

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Thoughts on Changing Bird Names

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