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By that argument, we should also blindly accept everything coming from AOU, because they are a regional organization???
Niels

But to be fair, isn't that how its always been between the AOU and IOC?

Perhaps I'm wrong about some South American species or another, but in my recollection, the IOC and AOS common name differ only when
1) There is some taxonomic disagreement (e.g. fox sparrows, yellow-rumped warbler)
2) The bird has a range beyond the AOU area and another name (e.g. Rough-legged Buzzard, Grey Plover)

IOC adopted Canada Jay and Thick-billed Longspur. Whether we agree or not, the name change to the weaver is entirely consistent. It would be far more shocking to me if the IOC were to have some policy that "American" names are respected but Kenyan names are not.
 
But once again, we need to recognize that there are different things that can be called "stability" and these sometimes are in conflict or paradox.

Laurent has a point regarding historical stability. But if Kenya uses one name and Britain uses another, I suppose we could call it a geographic instability. Its okay to have different opinions about which of those is the more important. But when we refuse to acknowledge the nuanced reality of the situation seems to be the precise time that these discussions devolve into the dug-in repetitive debates that so many here are dreading.

And here I will insert my obligatory reminder that Kalifi Weaver and Clarke's Weaver are both names for the species, and that in my humble opinion the most stable system would be for us to stop pretending that there is one and only one English name for each species of bird.
The 'the nuanced reality of the situation ' is that there is a minuscule number of African birders or wildlife professionals who will use a particular name, balanced against, in this case, 50 years worth of written work which is, on a whim, out of date. Debates don't have to be 'repetitive' if a solid, justification for a name change is given, I'm not 100% on this one.

I suggest also that far from there being 'so many' people 'dreading' any conversations, there are actually quite few and they really need to grow up if they cannot tolerate differing points of view.

On the last point, I was labouring under the impression that a stable, single, nomenclature was the aim?
 
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except...
The link in the line
Life List+full ssp (v14.2, Excel File XLSX, 3.0Mb)
its says 14.2 but the link is to the old 14.1 file

Ah well... still transitioning, I suppose


EDIT: now fixed.

(To me it's a bit vague what the different files are for anyway, I just use the master_file and I hope that that is the most complete, and that the other files are derived)
 
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On the last point, I was labouring under the impression that a stable, single, nomenclature was the aim?
Common names are the least important aspect of nomenclature, and I don't think that was ever the goal of WGAC, or ever possible (I have about as much a chance of convincing most Brits to use Black-bellied Plover as they have of convincing me to use Grey Plover).

What is important, for conservation assessment, citizen science initiatives, etc is for folks to agree on what species and subspecies are recognized, what subspecies go with what species, and higher level taxonomy (genus and above). That's really what this checklist reconciliation process is about. WGAC has even stated they basically don't care about common names and will list multiple ones when present.
 
So you guys are planning to turn this thread inyo another eponym battlefield?

My comment at least was completely unrelated to the eponymous nature of the name being dropped.

FWIW, dropping Oceanic Flycatcher in favour of "Chuuk Flycatcher" (#2,852 above) did not involve an eponym, but I would regard it as a similarly poor move, for basically the same reason (the change is unnecessary; Google Books : 1 hit...). Not to mention that "Chuuk", in this last case, is arguably inviting confusion, as Myiagra spp are or have been called "monarch" (or some variation on this word) in a lot of languages (German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, all the Scandinavian languages, Slovak, Turkish... as well as, occasionally, English), and "Chuuk Monarch" is the established name of a wholly different species.

Laurent has a point regarding historical stability. But if Kenya uses one name and Britain uses another, I suppose we could call it a geographic instability. Its okay to have different opinions about which of those is the more important. But when we refuse to acknowledge the nuanced reality of the situation seems to be the precise time that these discussions devolve into the dug-in repetitive debates that so many here are dreading.

Temporal (I prefer this to historical, with suggests very long delays) stability is important for diachronic communication (yesterday's workers passing info to tomorrow's workers); universality (your "geographic stability") matters in synchronic communication (today's Kenyans and Brits, talking together). I tend to regard departures from temporal stability as more problematic because, particularly if the issuer is not around any more, they can more easily result in a complete failure to detect an attempt of communication -- but this is my personal view, I guess. Both certainly have their importance, and it's a pity to have to sacrifice one to the other.
 
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For some reason, some people insist on calling my home city "Londres". As an English person I know this is plain wrong. After seeing efforts going back centuries, I've had to come to accept the French are just not going to use the right name.

The point is that different people have different names for the same thing. I don't think we should worry about this. Common names for birds serve a different purpose to scientific names. The latter are meant to be globally unique IDs. Common names don't have this requirement. Please stop messing with them
 
For some reason, some people insist on calling my home city "Londres". As an English person I know this is plain wrong. After seeing efforts going back centuries, I've had to come to accept the French are just not going to use the right name.

The point is that different people have different names for the same thing. I don't think we should worry about this. Common names for birds serve a different purpose to scientific names. The latter are meant to be globally unique IDs. Common names don't have this requirement. Please stop messing with them
That's a false equivalence though - I suspect all English speakers call it London - Oui?!!
 
For some reason, some people insist on calling my home city "Londres". As an English person I know this is plain wrong. After seeing efforts going back centuries, I've had to come to accept the French are just not going to use the right name.
This is explained linguistically by the addition of the "r" sound over time (rhotacism).
 
Interesting... I'm unclear where the "r" comes in in "London" [or Londinium] but still.

The French form Londres is explained by four facts: the adoption in Old French of the English form then in force (Lunden); its adaptation to French phonology (Lond(e)n); the rhotacization of the final n, common at the time (Londre); and finally the addition of a final -s (Londres). This form was then adopted by the Iberian languages, but with its own pronunciation (such as Catalan Londres [ˈɫon.dɾəs] or Portuguese Londres [ˈlõ.dɾɨʃ ]).
 
For some reason, some people insist on calling my home city "Londres". As an English person I know this is plain wrong. After seeing efforts going back centuries, I've had to come to accept the French are just not going to use the right name.

The point is that different people have different names for the same thing. I don't think we should worry about this. Common names for birds serve a different purpose to scientific names. The latter are meant to be globally unique IDs. Common names don't have this requirement. Please stop messing with them
Until the very last sentence, I was sure this was going to be a statement pro-change.
There's just as much reason to change the name as there is to keep it. In the end, I highly doubt it's a matter that will have any significant influence on anyones life here.

I am in favour of coming up with new names, of they are better, which to me is the case here. But I also understand that people like stability.

What I dislike is the strong ideology that shimmers through the anti-change comments. Five years ago, nobody would have bat an eye at the name change, especially given that there are quite good reasons for it. But now that there has been an online eponym war, every little change is investigated here as if your survival depended on it.

And have to read through pages of the same arguments by the same people over and over again without anything fruitful coming from it.
 
Temporal (I prefer this to historical, with suggests very long delays) stability is important for diachronic communication (yesterday's workers passing info to tomorrow's workers); universality (your "geographic stability") matters in synchronic communication (today's Kenyans and Brits, talking together). I tend to regard departures from temporal stability as more problematic because, particularly if the issuer is not around any more, they can more easily result in a complete failure to detect an attempt of communication -- but this is my personal view, I guess. Both certainly have their importance, and it's a pity to have to sacrifice one to the other.

I like this explanation (and I like the vocabulary you suggest here). I'm in agreement for the most part about it being a pity to have to sacrifice one to the other, although I suspect I may differ from some on the extent of what that sacrifice entails. For each bird, we have a Latin name also - and as you more than anyone here knows that a Latin name has a temporal lineage which has its own sensitivities to the temporal stability/instability. On the other hand, universality for Latin names is a taxonomic issue, and not a nomenclature issue for the most part.

English names do introduce more issue regarding the universality, but so does the English language in general and we are not going to divorce English bird names from the linguistic behavior of the language - no matter how hard we may try. Bird names do have the special quality of having that associate Latin name and that is an immense aid to all sorts of stability. My personal view is that the scientific nomenclature mitigates the "sacrifice" to a very manageable extent - indeed that is the entire point of a scientific name. Where I bristle is the point at which people pretend that the English name should do the job of the Latin name - is it really the job of the English name to be the bedrock of nomenclatural stability, especially when there is another tool which is so much better suited toward that? And even if we believe that is the case, why do we think we should "direct" that stability away from the natural forces that stabilize a language to begin with - whether that language involves birds or not? It seems rare that words change meaning or that things change names without some associated utility (even among checklist committees!)

I think a clearer way to express it may be this: we as taxonomists have invented scientific nomenclature and the centuries of use of this institution attest to its power and utility. But English (or any language) nomenclature is different in several fundamental ways. We spend so much time here discussing what English language should do with regard to bird names. When I see the adoption of the different weaver name, I believe I'm witnessing an acknowledgement of what the English language does do with regard to bird names. I think we could go even farther by acknowledging that English bird names are not a zero sum game - I can use either name for the weaver and even misspell it and the point of English language (communication) still occurs. Yes, there may be a sacrifice in that the parties may need to do a little bit of extra communication to fill in any knowledge gaps of universality, or temporal or philosophical or any other kind of understanding. But as long as we are using the English language, that "sacrifice" is there and always will be.
 
Until the very last sentence, I was sure this was going to be a statement pro-change.
There's just as much reason to change the name as there is to keep it. In the end, I highly doubt it's a matter that will have any significant influence on anyones life here.

I am in favour of coming up with new names, of they are better, which to me is the case here. But I also understand that people like stability.

What I dislike is the strong ideology that shimmers through the anti-change comments. Five years ago, nobody would have bat an eye at the name change, especially given that there are quite good reasons for it. But now that there has been an online eponym war, every little change is investigated here as if your survival depended on it.

And have to read through pages of the same arguments by the same people over and over again without anything fruitful coming from it.
The essential problem I have is that we have 2 sets of names, common and scientific. Only one of these is "mandated" to be a unique ID which has to be formulated in a way which obeys (arcane) rules, the "latin" one.

It's expected and accepted that this a) in some sense reflects underlying relatedness (phylogeny), and b) since applying names involves categorising +/- continuous variation then the breaks defining the taxa will be subjective and subject to change. Thus, the names will be too.

In the last 2 few decades the developments in computing power and biochemical methods have led to an explosion of studies. This not surprisingly has caused a lot of scientific name change. Unfortunately, taxonomists and "authorities" have increasingly addressed common names too. There are no such rules and regulations associated with these, no similar need to provide unique IDs, no requirement that they should be standardised within / across languages, regions, no requirement that they follow genetic relatedness etc.

I understand but don't have a strong position on historical eponyms. Aside from this I do want stability and certainly don't want unnecessary changing of common names. For example, it's really unnecessary to 'Change the English names of Chlorospingus species from “Bush-Tanager” to “Chlorospingus” '. Their relatedness is irrelevant. Shall we start renaming all the robins around the world because they're not robins, or all the warblers ? Common names and scientific ones have different purposes. If common names are to fulfil the role of scientific ones, let's drop the scientific names and just use the English (of course) common ones.
 
The essential problem I have is that we have 2 sets of names, common and scientific. Only one of these is "mandated" to be a unique ID which has to be formulated in a way which obeys (arcane) rules, the "latin" one.

It's expected and accepted that this a) in some sense reflects underlying relatedness (phylogeny), and b) since applying names involves categorising +/- continuous variation then the breaks defining the taxa will be subjective and subject to change. Thus, the names will be too.

In the last 2 few decades the developments in computing power and biochemical methods have led to an explosion of studies. This not surprisingly has caused a lot of scientific name change. Unfortunately, taxonomists and "authorities" have increasingly addressed common names too. There are no such rules and regulations associated with these, no similar need to provide unique IDs, no requirement that they should be standardised within / across languages, regions, no requirement that they follow genetic relatedness etc.

I understand but don't have a strong position on historical eponyms. Aside from this I do want stability and certainly don't want unnecessary changing of common names. For example, it's really unnecessary to 'Change the English names of Chlorospingus species from “Bush-Tanager” to “Chlorospingus” '. Their relatedness is irrelevant. Shall we start renaming all the robins around the world because they're not robins, or all the warblers ? Common names and scientific ones have different purposes. If common names are to fulfil the role of scientific ones, let's drop the scientific names and just use the English (of course) common ones.
I might be willing to agree with you, but in this particular case new genetic information have nothing to do with the name change, instead there is obviously a change in real-life usage of the name within it's range, as has been pointed out above.
I wonder, if Bearded Reedling was changed back to Bearded Tit would the people on this forum still advocate for stability, even if it meant disruption of current usage in the IOC checklist? (There's likely better examples out there, so let's not get hung up on this one, but it should become clear what I mean.)
 

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