In Sweden we had an infected case; when the older, traditional, extremely well-known name
tornsvala (meaning "Tower Swallow"), known in; litterature, folk songs, sayings, legends, poetry etc., etc., för the Common/Eurasian Swift
Apus apus, was changed (in 1978) into
tornseglare ("Tower Swift") following modern Taxonomy (in
Apodidae) ... a change that caused an awful row, that went on for years, especially among history interested ornithologist, and culture-historians in general. Today everything is calm, serenity rules, and the "new" name is widely accepted, used by just about everyone (except maybe some reluctant Poets, a few Purists, and people who couldn´t care less).
But nobody dares, wise of this unpleasant experience (totally incomprehensible, or simply fun, to the unitiated), to even think of suggesting a similar alteration for the bird we call
spillkråka [meaning something like "Split/Splitting Crow" (as in 'split wood', not taxonomic dittos
)] for the Black Woodpecker
Dryocopus martius. Everybody (who cares) does understand it´s not a Crow.
In my view (if transferable to an AOS view?) stability of Common names is preferable to taxonomic perfection (except in cases where Common names can be regarded as offensive, of course). It´s hard enough to keep up with the changes of Scientific names.
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