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List of German vernacular names (1 Viewer)

Melanie

Well-known member
Germany
The German journal Vogelwarte from the German Ornithologists' Society will publish an up to date list of German vernacular names of all known bird species in its 58th issue (due in June 2020). This is in so far good as there were several splits, lumps and new descriptions after the publishing of the HBW and BirdLife Illustrated Checklist.
 
The German journal Vogelwarte from the German Ornithologists' Society will publish an up to date list of German vernacular names of all known bird species in its 58th issue (due in June 2020). This is in so far good as there were several splits, lumps and new descriptions after the publishing of the HBW and BirdLife Illustrated Checklist.

Melanie, presumably there will be an accessible electronic version?
MJB
 
I can hardly imagine anything more boring than such a list.

Niels

Okay, and why should German bird names be more boring than e.g. Dutch bird names? Are there more Dutch birders on this planet than German birders? And what about Birds of the World? Why there is a Dutch name for any bird species but German names only for the European ones?
 
In my experience, German birders abroad use English names. Other potential users are cagebird keeping community, but they use completely different names.

However, an overlooked target may be lovers of crosswords and word puzzles, who love strange words.
 
I think bird interested layman might merely use German names. When I describe a new bird species in Wikipeda I would like to prefer the German name than the scientific name as lemma. To take an example: Madanga ruficollis was known as Orangekehlbrillenvogel for decades. The vernacular name was changed into Burupieper in 2019. I was very happy about that change because it gave me the opportunity to change the lemma into the correct vernacular name instead of using the scientific name. And the other thing I don't know why Birds of the World don't adopt all German names from HBW Alive. Avibase did that.
 
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Okay, and why should German bird names be more boring than e.g. Dutch bird names? Are there more Dutch birders on this planet than German birders? And what about Birds of the World? Why there is a Dutch name for any bird species but German names only for the European ones?

I am sorry if my comment was taken as being anti German, that was not my intent. I feel that any list that only contains names is boring. Being Danish, I disagreed with the effort put into making a list of Danish names for all the birds of the world. At least, that list did not take up a volume of a journal.

Niels
 
I think bird interested layman might merely use German names. When I describe a new bird species in Wikipeda I would like to prefer the German name than the scientific name as lemma. To take an example: Madanga ruficollis was known as Orangekehlbrillenvogel for decades. The vernacular name was changed into Burupieper in 2019. I was very happy about that change because it gave me the opportunity to change the lemma into the correct vernacular name instead of using the scientific name. And the other thing I don't know why Birds of the World don't adopt all German names from HBW Alive. Avibase did that.

What I take from all this is the fact that the Babylonian confusion regarding names is now continuing on the various languages level. I still recall an encounter we had in Thailand some years ago with a German birder. He told us about a bird he had seen, but he only knew the German name that none of us, also German speaking birders, knew. We strictly adhered to the English names that were the only ones for which there was a FG (aside from scientific names, of course that were in that book as well).

And the fact that there is now a movement to change an established list of German names in HBW, is exactly what should be maintained, for those who want a German name. It is not helping the cause by starting to change those names. Soon, nobody will be certain which name to use. I can't conclude anything else than that there are some underemployed systematicists, to put it politely.
 
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30 years after Die Vogelarten der Erde by Hans Edmund Wolters (1976-1982) and four years after the HBW and BirdLife Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World (2014, 2016) there is an updated list of the German vernacular names of all bird species on earth. Edited by Peter H. Barthel from the D-OG (Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft, German Ornithologists' Society) with the collaboration of Einhard Bezzel and others. The complete list can be found in the new issue of the magazine Vogelwarte. Listed are the German vernacular name, the English vernacular name as well as the region where the species occurs. All species newly described until 2019 (e.g. Dicaeum dayakorum) are considered. New bird species described in 2020 are unfortunately not included. Here is the PDF version: http://www.do-g.de/publikationen/vogelwarte/inhalte-online/ If you would like to have this as a physical book, you can get it exclusively at Christ Media Natur for 19.80 Euro.
 
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,To take an example: Madanga ruficollis was known as Orangekehlbrillenvogel for decades. The vernacular name was changed into Burupieper in 2019.

Out of interest, I went to google.de and put these in search.

The word Orangekehlbrillenvogel was used only once ever in German. It appears in a list of a natural history collection. All other links point to dictionaries and translations. The word Burupieper was never used outside dictionaries and translations. No link to a German trip report, bird magazine, ornithology publication, whatever.

These online tools are humbling, isn't it? Really nobody uses German names of obscure foreign birds.
 
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Orangekehlbrillenvogel was used by the HBW (book edition). Burupieper was used by HBW Alive (online) from 2019. There is an interesting foreword where they explain why there was a need for a new checklist of German names because many non-passerines had outdated names (e.g. the name Kasarka is now changed into Gans). Another point are the names of the bird families. Many families were only known by their scientific names but therefor that several new bird families were erected in the past 10 years new German vernacular names for families had to be established.
 
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Orangekehlbrillenvogel was used by the HBW (book edition). Burupieper was used by HBW Alive (online) from 2019. There is an interesting foreword where they explain why there was a need for a new checklist of German names because many non-passerines had outdated names (e.g. the name Kasarka is now changed into Gans). Another point are the names of the bird families. Many families were only known by their scientific names but therefor that several new bird families were erected in the past 10 years new German vernacular names for families had to be established.

I agree for the need of updated family names. But as for the rest, it is nicely illustrated by Jurek's post (#13). These names are nothing more than a new source for confusion. Makes much more sense to "force" (or maybe rather "motivate") German speakers to learn those names that are of actual use to them. And those are the English and/or the scientific names that one finds in the FGs. I must have mentioned it before, I definitely abstain from any German-spoken/led tours outside of Europe as I would otherwise have to deal with at least two names per species when I'm just happy to be able to discuss observations under one name only.
 
There exist also names for all the worlds birds in Polish. They were invented and published, apparently, in some relation to the wildlife trade law. This suggests that every bird name in Polish was used at least once in live language, in the appendix to the wildlife trade law. But I think most were never used twice.

In English the same situation exists with names of insects, mosses, algae and such. If they were invented, they are mostly dead language.
 
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There exist also names for all the worlds birds in Polish. They were invented and published, apparently, in some relation to the wildlife trade law. This suggests that every bird name in Polish was used at least once in live language, in the appendix to the wildlife trade law. But I think most were never used twice.

In English the same situation exists with names of insects, mosses, algae and such. If they were invented, they are mostly dead language.

In a different thread I was trying to get a similar meaning across: most of these world wide name files are going to just be boring reading (including Danish lists, which is my native language).

Niels
 
What I take from all this is the fact that the Babylonian confusion regarding names is now continuing on the various languages level. I still recall an encounter we had in Thailand some years ago with a German birder. He told us about a bird he had seen, but he only knew the German name that none of us, also German speaking birders, knew. We strictly adhered to the English names that were the only ones for which there was a FG (aside from scientific names, of course that were in that book as well).

And the fact that there is now a movement to change an established list of German names in HBW, is exactly what should be maintained, for those who want a German name. It is not helping the cause by starting to change those names. Soon, nobody will be certain which name to use. I can't conclude anything else than that there are some underemployed systematicists, to put it politely.

Probably minor, compared to what's being done to the English list, for several reasons.

It's also interesting, that there are German names for e.g Jacana - Blatthühnchen, so it seems that they don't have an issue with using German names for foreign birds.

Melanie, are there any examples where none German words are used in names?
 
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