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What is the proper plural for Canada Goose & Tufted Titmouse? (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Terry O'Nolley
- Start date
David FG
The Big Dipper
scampo said:
Why? I seem to remember quite a while ago that there was a discussion about this and I think that by convention, bird (and indeed other animal and plant/fungi etc) species are capitalized, so although one would write 'there are several species of duck out there', one would write, 'there are 20 Tufted Duck out there'.
A quick trawl through the books on my shelves (not, I must confess, a very scientific study on my part, but I am not going to spend hours on the task) bears my instinct out on this.
jedku
Marc
There is controversy about the capitalization of common names.
AOU requires capitalization and I think it is the general practice in the birding community.
But many literary editors, botanists and general biologists do not capitalize common names or the species part of the latin name. Except where they contain proper nouns, i.e. Canada goose.
I believe it is practical to capitalize for clarity.
AOU requires capitalization and I think it is the general practice in the birding community.
But many literary editors, botanists and general biologists do not capitalize common names or the species part of the latin name. Except where they contain proper nouns, i.e. Canada goose.
I believe it is practical to capitalize for clarity.
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david kelly
Drive-by Birder
Nerine said:
Mongoose is a loan word from Marathi, an Indian language. The Marathi word mangus has been corrupted into mongoose in English so the plural is mongooses.
David
scampo
Steve Campsall
There was a discussion about a year ago and it led nowhere much - but the standard English grammatical convention is perfectly clear, whatever idiosyncracies or instincts exist. This is that a proper name is an individual given name, whether it is a person, place, building, bird or anything else. A proper noun - some call it a naming noun - is always given an initial capital letter to distinguish it as an individual within a group. Common nouns are not capitalised.David FG said:
If a part of a bird's name is borrowed from a proper noun, then it should retain its inital capitalisation, e.g. Eleanora's falcon. Some authorities choose to break with the convention and give initial capitals to all bird names. How this saves confusion, I do not know, although there are a very few occasions when it can help clarity, but these are rare and really quite obvious anyway; I rather think it's just one of those things - after all, English is about usage, not rules (but conventions are there for a useful purpose nonetheless). I don't know which guide you looked at but it varies. The Collins' guide does capitalise, I notice, choosing a non-standard approach.
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robinm
Registered User
Capitalisation is used by British Birds and it certainly does avoid confusion. There are numerous situations where this applies little grebe, common sandpiper - I could go on and on but this was "done to death" in the previous thread.
It is nothing to do with grammar and everything to do with convention - much like scientific names which are (by convention) italicised and the genus is capitalised.
It is nothing to do with grammar and everything to do with convention - much like scientific names which are (by convention) italicised and the genus is capitalised.
scampo
Steve Campsall
Looking through my many birding guides, it varies. I can't imagine why it should be "practical" at all - I suspect it started with a lack of knowledge of the standard convention and it has caught on in some quarters. It's like the use of the apostrophe - ignorance leads to misuse, but ignorance is a major engine driving language change and there's no stopping that!jedku said:
halftwo
Wird Batcher
David FG said:
David, Katy,
I did a "thinking out loud" post on this name subject not too long ago. I just tried to find it but can't.
In brief there seems to be no particular pattern on place-named birds. Some countries and all States just use the country/state name; others add the adjectival. (And the only English county - Kent - has Kentish).
Same with other places - seas, rivers, mountain ranges, islands etc. - they're all inconsistant with this; I don't know why.
Halftwo
Katy Penland
Well-known member
Yep, and California Thrasher, Arizona Woodpecker. I like what Halftwo said, just one of those inconsistencies in naming conventions.David FG said:
Katy Penland
Well-known member
I kinda wish all parts of the common names -- of all taxa -- were capitalized. Would make it easier to understand whether someone is referring to "a" blue whale as the species or as a blue-colored whale. Ditto any species that uses a color or other common word, like, e.g., "Common" as part of its common name.halftwo said:
Is it a raven that's common or a Common Raven? :bounce:
scampo said:
But do proper nouns need to be capitalised to avoid ambiguity, steve?
Katy Penland
Well-known member
Without caps, yes, could definitely be ambiguous. If someone emails to me they've "seen a blue whale", or a "gray whale", are they talking about the species or about a large marine mammal that looks blue or gray?scampo said:
Wonder why common names aren't capped to begin with. They're a proper noun, aren't they? Not scientific, but proper nonetheless. At least I've always looked at them as if they're proper nouns.
deeestuary
Dee Estuary
jedku said:
I agree. Whether it is strictly accurate or not it is common practice to capitilize bird names, we certainly do for the Cheshire and Wirral bird report.
As for plurals - definitely Canada Geese. I would use titmouse for singular and plural. I also agree with the idea that many bird names can be used either in the singular or plural.
As in Knot, Dunlin, Teal, Curlew etc. Dunlins just doesn't look right!
scampo
Steve Campsall
They certainly don't, Andrew - but the use of capitalised letters was once linked to the nuances of meaning created by a word; and I suspect it still serves that purpose on occasion. In days of old it was a means of emphasising the importance of the thing being written about as well as to help to show where emphasis was required in texts that were to be read aloud. But even this was not fixed by rule or convention. The use of capitals was a fashion in England, in part: Germanic scripts were heavily capitalised, Italian scripts less so. The fixed "rule", like most grammar "rules", emerged during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when universal literacy came about - it was deemed easier to teach a set of "grammar rules" then later, if you were able, choose to flout those rules for stylistic purposes, rather than to have no rules at all.Andrew Whitehouse said:
Lighter capitalisation began in the eighteenth century and nowadays - in typed rather than handwritten texts at least, with the deemed pressure of time and the need to press an extra key to switch to a capital letter - there is a move towards almost much less capitalisation being used. As always, however, this is context linked - whilst a lower case txt msg is fine, I doubt many would accept the Encyclopaedia Britannica capitalising erratically or not at all.
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scampo
Steve Campsall
Well, words need to carry feeling as well as meaning and clarity; I would say that the use of a capital can add a nuance to a word. Again this depends on context, but it would be a loss, in my view to lose capitalisation. Capitalisation also indicates the beginning of a sentence, of course.David FG said:
scampo
Steve Campsall
Well, they say the exception proves the rule, eh? I would say that in those very few cases where ambiguity might possibly arise, then the writer would be better to recast the sentence to remove any doubt.Katy Penland said:Without caps, yes, could definitely be ambiguous. If someone emails to me they've "seen a blue whale", or a "gray whale", are they talking about the species or about a large marine mammal that looks blue or gray?
Wonder why common names aren't capped to begin with. They're a proper noun, aren't they? Not scientific, but proper nonetheless. At least I've always looked at them as if they're proper nouns.
And if I'd seen a blue whale, I'd probably write "I've seen a BLUE WHALE!!"
Proper nouns are always the names of individual common nouns, though.
