Capitalization of Common Bird Names? (1 Viewer)

The problem with all this is that basically, most of you are suggesting that the rules of English should be ignored because you want them to be, because you like birds. Capital letters are for proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences - end of.

Capitalizing might disambiguate a badly written sentence, but hey, so does re-writing the sentence (or choosing different words), and the idea that it generates a class system in birds is frankly, hilarious.

Think of it this way - regardless of how mad keen on furniture I was, there's no way anyone on this forum would condone the following:

I walked through the Door, hung my umbrella on the Hatstand and placed my car keys on the Table. After grabbing a beer from the Fridge, I sat on the Sofa and put my feet up on the arm of the Chair.

If people want to capitalise birds that's fine, especially here, and in trip reports etc. But it's not right!

Fat Paul Scholes said:

Capital letters are for proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences - end of.

Click to expand...

Not really 'end of'

Please provide a definition of a proper noun - usually it runs something along the lines of "A proper noun is a name that identifies a particular person, place, or thing" (Oxford Dictionary), or "the name of a particular person, place or thing that is spelt with a beginning capital letter" (Cambridge University). Both definitions, and others, indicate that a proper noun is the name given to something to make it more specific.

I don't really see, purely on grammatical grounds, reason for excluding specific bird names. Comes under the identifying particular things for me.

Fat Paul Scholes said:

But it's not right!

Click to expand...

Thus, it is right

Fat Paul Scholes said:

The problem with all this is that basically, most of you are suggesting that the rules of English should be ignored because you want them to be, because you like birds. Capital letters are for proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences - end of.

If people want to capitalise birds that's fine, especially here, and in trip reports etc. But it's not right!

Click to expand...

On the contrary, it's as right as most 'rules' that govern our language since, fortunately, English is not held hostage by arbitrary 'rules'. Besides, these 'rules' are often the invention of frustrated grammarians wishing to make our language into something that it is not. English usage has always been more a matter of convention and tradition than brittle rules. These are obeyed up until the point where they get in the way of understanding when, with anarchic joy, they are broken. As I recall at one time many nouns now conventionally given a lower case were capitalised in the past but this convention was abandoned when found wanting. The tradition of capitalising bird names in English ornithological literature goes back at least to "The Ornithology of Francis Willughby" (1678) and you can't get much further back than that. It was followed by Bewick, Montagu and others into the 19th century and beyond. I think such a long pedigree is a better guide to the 'rules' or rather conventions of written English than a barrel load of pedantic grammarians.

Hi Dan,

Dan Miller said:

Both BirdWatching and Living Bird capitalize common names. I presume each of these define this in their own specific style sheets.

Click to expand...

As a foreign speaker, I really appreciate the capitalization since it's pretty hard to tell in English when something is supposed to be part of the bird's name, and when it's supposed to be a descriptive adjective if you don't know all of the birds' names by heart already.

If I see a "ruddy turnstone" mentioned, was that a particular ruddy individuum or a Arenaria interpres? Is a "pale rock sparrow" a lighter individuum of the common rock sparrow species, or a separate species? Is "brown flycatcher" the description of an indistinct little brown bird, or a species name? No easy way to tell.

Now it might be that all of this somes natural for a native speaker ... but considering that most people don't know very many birds' names, I would suspect that my confusion might be shared by a lot of beginner birders, even if they grew up with English as their first language.

It's worth noting that the Collins bird guide capitalizes bird names, and I just checked a copy of Sibley's Eastern North America guide, and it does too.

Regards,

Henning

Jos Stratford said:

Not really 'end of'

Please provide a definition of a proper noun - usually it runs something along the lines of "A proper noun is a name that identifies a particular person, place, or thing" (Oxford Dictionary), or "the name of a particular person, place or thing that is spelt with a beginning capital letter" (Cambridge University). Both definitions, and others, indicate that a proper noun is the name given to something to make it more specific.

I don't really see, purely on grammatical grounds, reason for excluding specific bird names. Comes under the identifying particular things for me.




Thus, it is right

Click to expand...

So this is right too?

I walked through the Door, hung my umbrella on the Hatstand and placed my car keys on the Table. After grabbing a beer from the Fridge, I sat on the Sofa and put my feet up on the arm of the Chair.

Fat Paul Scholes said:

The problem with all this is that basically, most of you are suggesting that the rules of English should be ignored because you want them to be, because you like birds. Capital letters are for proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences - end of.

Capitalizing might disambiguate a badly written sentence, but hey, so does re-writing the sentence (or choosing different words), and the idea that it generates a class system in birds is frankly, hilarious.

Think of it this way - regardless of how mad keen on furniture I was, there's no way anyone on this forum would condone the following:

I walked through the Door, hung my umbrella on the Hatstand and placed my car keys on the Table. After grabbing a beer from the Fridge, I sat on the Sofa and put my feet up on the arm of the Chair.

If people want to capitalise birds that's fine, especially here, and in trip reports etc. But it's not right!

Click to expand...

But who decides what are proper nouns? And why?

I know nothing about grammar (as may have been obvious, looking down through the years )

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun dicusses proper nouns however.

Seems you have common nouns, such as dogs, birds, furniture etc. And Proper nouns, such as Rover and Fifi, Polly as specific examples. Surely species groups come between the two and are specific entity groups? - A decision could be made to allow capitalization? Styles (akin to species) of furniture are capitalized - Neoclassism, Baroque etc and Art Deco.

Species are a special named class of living organisms - very specific. Convention could allow for them to be capitalized?

There are probably enough precedents for inconsistencies in the English language to allow for a special case, no?

'I walked through the door, hung my umbrella on Brian and placed my car keys on the table. After grabbing a beer from the Smeg, I sat on the Chesterfield and put my feet up on the arm of the Aspen Recliner.'

John Cantelo said:

On the contrary, it's as right as most 'rules' that govern our language since, fortunately, English is not held hostage by arbitrary 'rules'. Besides, these 'rules' are often the invention of frustrated grammarians wishing to make our language into something that it is not. English usage has always been more a matter of convention and tradition than brittle rules. These are obeyed up until the point where they get in the way of understanding when, with anarchic joy, they are broken. As I recall at one time many nouns now conventionally given a lower case were capitalised in the past but this convention was abandoned when found wanting. The tradition of capitalising bird names in English ornithological literature goes back at least to "The Ornithology of Francis Willughby" (1678) and you can't get much further back than that. It was followed by Bewick, Montagu and others into the 19th century and beyond. I think such a long pedigree is a better guide to the 'rules' or rather conventions of written English than a barrel load of pedantic grammarians.

Click to expand...

English is full of rules, or conventions, if you want to call them that. In your post you've used capital letters for people's names, at the beginning of sentences, and full stops at the end - all rules or conventions. They might be arbitrary, but no-one is held hostage by them.

I wouldn't disagree that lots of people do it and have done it in the past, and I'm very much in favour of language evolving. How ever i think Wed all Agree that retaining SOme sort of structure Would be usefUL

It's not something that I feel particularly strongly about, but I do feel that if you think birds names should be capitalised, you should be on board with other people capitalising lots of other things. Tables, Chairs, a Book, a Cup, a pair of Green Wellies etc.

Fat Paul Scholes said:

So this is right too?

I walked through the Door, hung my umbrella on the Hatstand and placed my car keys on the Table. After grabbing a beer from the Fridge, I sat on the Sofa and put my feet up on the arm of the Chair.

Click to expand...

If you so wish it to be ...but of course not in reality. However, go into Ikea or furniture retailer of your choice and I think you will find that individual models of hatstand, sofa, etc, usually are in capitals.

I do not capitalize 'bird' or 'gull' or 'finch', but do the individual species. Same pretty much with furniture.


PS. do you have a hatstand?

Ha - No I don't have a hatstand! I just keep my Hats in a Pile on the Floor.

dantheman said:

Species are a special named class of living organisms - very specific. Convention could allow for them to be capitalized?

Click to expand...

Thinking a little further, all species names are a specific case which already are treated differently in that all English (or any other language) common names have an associated scientific name (or latin name) with a formalised grammar already associated.

eg Red Fox - Vulpes vulpes

ie italicized, capitilization of the first part of the latin binomial (lower-case for the latter and subspecies in the trinomial).

Animal and plant species names are specific named entities, albeit of a group. Don't think it is quite comparable to forms or types of furniture, even if manufacturers and furniture fetishists try to state otherwise. No-one is calling for words like Egret or Table to be capitalized.

Hi Paul,

Fat Paul Scholes said:

So this is right too?

I walked through the Door, hung my umbrella on the Hatstand and placed my car keys on the Table. After grabbing a beer from the Fridge, I sat on the Sofa and put my feet up on the arm of the Chair.

Click to expand...

As a German, I'd like to encourage you to capitalize the rest of the nouns too to reap the full benefit of this highly recommended technique ;-)

Regards,

Henning

Hi Dan,

dantheman said:

But who decides what are proper nouns? And why?

[...]

After grabbing a beer from the Smeg

Click to expand...

This example reminded me that "fridge" might just be an erosion from the proper noun "Frigidaire", which nicely illustrates that your question is indeed a deep one.

Regards,

Henning

In germany this is actually how we do it: Every noun is capitalised. And it works very well for us.

However I'm surprised to see that some people would be against capitalizing bird names. Many good points have been raised and the Common Tern example underlines the necessity of this convention.
Many bird names contain adjectives that would be impossible to be distinguished from descriptive terms for particular individuals. In your examples, Mark, such a problem does not exist, there are no descriptive adjectives attached to the furniture you mention. A green hatstand will always be a hatstand that is green, unlike in birds where often age and sex have influence on how much the individual actually resembles its own name.
Now if you owned a chair in different sizes, but always called Great Chair, then it might make sense to capitalise the words. Because people would be very confused if you started talking about your tiny, uncomfortable, god-awful great chair.

In my opinion it's a necessity to capitalise organism names, not doing so creates much more confusion than doing so.

It should be noticed that even Latin names (the species epithet) were capitalized in the past (e.g. in the 18th and 19th century)

Fat Paul Scholes said:

So this is right too?

I walked through the Door, hung my umbrella on the Hatstand and placed my car keys on the Table. After grabbing a beer from the Fridge, I sat on the Sofa and put my feet up on the arm of the Chair.

Click to expand...

No, putting your feet up on the arm of the chair is disgusting behaviour, not right at all. Desist at once! 3

Sorry, i forgot to mention that id Taken my Shoes Off... ;-)

So far, the only argument I have seen in favour of using non-capitalised bird names is that it is "linguistic convention". This is what Wikipedia has to say under its entry on English capitalization of proper nouns - Modern standardization and exceptions:

"Nouns and noun phrases that are not proper may be uniformly capitalized to indicate that they are definitive and regimented in their application (compare brand names, discussed earlier). For example, Mountain Bluebird does not identify a unique individual, and it is not a proper name but a so-called common name (somewhat misleadingly, because this is not intended as a contrast with the term proper name). Such capitalization indicates that the term is a conventional designation for exactly that species (Sialia currucoides),[19] not for just any bluebird that happens to live in the mountains."

On the other hand, there are some very practical grounds listed on this thread arguing that capitalisation is useful. Given that the point of language is to accurately communicate ideas, I can see absolutely no merit in dogmatically following a convention in favour of a well-established and more useful exception.

Perhaps my argument would be more persuasive if I randomly capitalise words and write "end of" to shut down further debate?

I have a real sense of deja vu with this response, but...here goes..

For me, personally, it is lower case all the way for English names, unless they happen to be formed from a proper noun - reed warbler, Cetti's warbler etc.

I turn to the following to support my view:
1) It is (non-ornithological) scientific convention in most English-language journals to use lower case when common or vernacular names are used. e.g. Journal of Applied Ecology;
2) RSPB use lower case as a matter of convention (although I'm less impressed by their use of plurals..'teals' and 'wigeons' etc.); and
3) The late John Gooders, author of Where to Watch Birds always used lower case. As a man who gave directions to site by 'bus *, I was always impressed by his usage of English grammar, which I suspect exceeds that of most people alive today.

However, before I re-ignite another heated debate, I am aware of some equally strong counter-arguments, which have the effect of making either approach acceptable:
1) As I recall the BOU British List states that having an agreed format for English names gives them effectively the same status as proper nouns - the same would apply of course to AOU, IOC and Clements etc. standardised English nomenclature;
2) Ornithological journals such as Bird Study use upper case throughout; and
3) The point (well-made by Henning I think) for non-English speakers that capitalisation makes it easier to pick out species names is a valid one. I also understand that for native German speakers in particular it seems more natural.

So, I think it is a case of 'live and let live' - I'm personally more comfortable with lower case, but acknowledge that upper case usage is the preferred option for the majority of the birding community. I wouldn't criticise anyone for use of upper case, but expect to continue to use lower case without anyone criticising me (although I'm not going to go through and change all my upper case Scythebill printouts either). I only bristle slightly at capitalisation in a non-specific context - Tufted Duck OK, but a mixed flock of Ducks...please no!

I would commend the value of learning the scientific names of species too though - it provides an international language of communication, and I personally wouldn't expect a non-English speaking birder to know English names of birds. And it would be really great if we get back to using our 'scopes to pick out distant waders.

* - for the non British English speakers, a contraction of the now archaic 'omnibus'

Maffong said:

In germany this is actually how we do it: Every noun is capitalised. And it works very well for us.

However I'm surprised to see that some people would be against capitalizing bird names. Many good points have been raised and the Common Tern example underlines the necessity of this convention.
Many bird names contain adjectives that would be impossible to be distinguished from descriptive terms for particular individuals. In your examples, Mark, such a problem does not exist, there are no descriptive adjectives attached to the furniture you mention. A green hatstand will always be a hatstand that is green, unlike in birds where often age and sex have influence on how much the individual actually resembles its own name.
Now if you owned a chair in different sizes, but always called Great Chair, then it might make sense to capitalise the words. Because people would be very confused if you started talking about your tiny, uncomfortable, god-awful great chair.

In my opinion it's a necessity to capitalise organism names, not doing so creates much more confusion than doing so.

Click to expand...

Agree with all this,

a little bit of a tangent but, why do some (most?) languages assign gender to things and there is no way to tell what that gender is, you just learn that it is what it is, pointless.

The only time it's useful is e.g in German, if I mention a friend, it's clear if it's a male or female friend but genderising a table or a tree?.....and moving on.


A

Hi Andy,

andyadcock said:

The only time it's useful is e.g in German, if I mention a friend, it's clear if it's a male or female friend but genderising a table or a tree?

Click to expand...

It's actually useful all the time as it reduces ambiguity, since quite often the random gender assignments clarifies the connection between noun and pronoun. This only works on a statistical basis, but it works rather well.

While Mark Twain generally wrote quite unfavourably of German as a language ("I'd rather decline two German beers than one German verb!"), it's worth noting in the context of this thread that, despite of all his negative comments, he was a glowing fan of the German style of capitalization!

Regards,

Henning