Poll - Do you agree or disagree with the AOS's recent decision to abandon the use of eponymous bird names? (4 Viewers)

[temmie]

the IOC bird names has the following guideline / rule:

3. USE OF NONENGLISH WORDS: Non-English words that have been in common use for a substantial time have in effect become “English.”​

Usage would govern. The established names of many birds use their taxonomic name from another language. Just because a bird’s long-standing name was in fact its taxonomic name, it did not have to be changed to an English word. Thus names like Junco, Vireo, and Rhea have been retained. This is of particular significance in names of tropical birds, many of which are the taxon’s generic names (e.g., Elaenia , Jacana , Dacnis , Attila , Myzomela ). The committee rejected the idea of a wholesale renaming of these taxa, while recognizing that ongoing revisions of bird genera will continue to create odd mismatches. The committee likewise accepted a large number of Spanish words on the basis of long usage (e.g., Doradito, Monjita, Tapaculo) and even a number of Amerindian ones (e.g., Quetzal, Cacique). These latter two names are now in such wide usage that they appear in the Oxford English Dictionary. The most troublesome question was whether to adopt Hawaiian-language names for endemic Hawaiian birds. The spelling of those names with generally unfamiliar accent marks made this an even closer call. In the end the committee decided to follow such authorities as the New York Times Atlas of the World (for country names that are included in a species name), AOU Checklist (7th ed.), and others, and to use anglicized versions of Hawaiian bird names and other established non-English names.

 

[Farnboro John]

Big Island could become Peanutbutter Cheese and Jelly, Maui becomes Marmite, Molakai, O'ahu, Kauai, Ni'ihau, Kaho'olawe and Lanai are still up for ideas, but Midway Atoll need severe help! Midway is pretty naff. Sure its mid way between 2 random points, but boring! Johnston Atoll has to change as its eponymous. Wake Island is obvious. Woke Island!

You'll definitely get fifty percent of people complaining about Marmite.....

John

 

[temmie]

I've only read a third of this thread, but have found no ref to scientific names being changed.

Are there any proposals to rid the scientific honorifics from birds' names, and if so, why not?

There are many scientific names with surnames in them, often even when the English name doesn't contain one!

For scientific names, committees can only go by what is published through scientific papers.
As a commitee that is responsible for a name in a certain language, you can change that name in that language. That's all there is.

 

[Andy Adcock]

I realise this is going off topic but are you saying New Zeakand has imposed names like Kiwi, Kakapo, Kokako etc on the rest of the Englush speaking world and they need to be changed to something English?

I've been biting my tongue for a while about Hawaiian bird names but I really don't understand the problem people have with the names of Hawaiian Honeycreepers - why can't they just be called what they've been called for 100s of years - you seem to be happy to call the islands Hawaii, why don't we go full colonial & go back to calling them the Sandwich Isles. The names are beautiful and a good introduction to learning how to pronounce Polynesian words rather then giving them some bland instantly forgettable name

Dave,
the principle of having an 'English' name list is exactly that, the name should be in English which the Hawaiian one's aren't, I personally, cannot remember any of them!

Whilst I'm unaware of the actual history of the NZ names, they must be from a native language? Where do we stop, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Scandanavian names? It wouldn't be a list of English names then, would it and why do you have to raise the same, tired criticism of colonialism, simply for using our native tongue?

 

[halftwo]

Then the intentions to change English names is rather pointless.

 

[Andy Adcock]

I've only read a third of this thread, but have found no ref to scientific names being changed.

Are there any proposals to rid the scientific honorifics from birds' names, and if so, why not?

There are many scientific names with surnames in them, often even when the English name doesn't contain one!

I recall reading something along the lines of 'not yet', for one thing, there is a much more controlled methodology, governemd by the IUZN and it's nowhere near as easy as changing the common name. The scientific name is supposed to be a constant in situations where mutiple names exist for the same species or for use in the case of name changes, it would be a mess if both common and scientific names were changed, how would you know what was what?

International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature

www.iczn.org

 

[halftwo]

I quite agree, Andy. But leaving all those honorifcs in one part while removing them from the other seems almost redundant. (If redundant is qualifiable!)

 

[temmie]

Then the intentions to change English names is rather pointless.

Whether changing names is pointless or not, is the content of the last 26 pages of this topic

 

[Dave Boyle]

Dave,
the principle of having an 'English' name list is exactly that, the name should be in English which the Hawaiian one's aren't, I personally, cannot remember any of them!

Whilst I'm unaware of the actual history of the NZ names, they must be from a native language? Where do we stop, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Scandanavian names? It wouldn't be a list of English names then, would it and why do you have to raise the same, tired criticism of colonialism, simply for using our native tongue?

Where's the criticism? When Captain Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands he named them the Sandwich Islands in honour of the Earl of Sandwich, isn't that the English name for the islands?

Just adopt the names as English names, it's so simple and has been done so many times in the past

 

[Andy Hurley]

You'll definitely get fifty percent of people complaining about Marmite.....

John

Have you tasted vegemite? I suppose its what you grow up with. Aussies may or not prefer it to marmite. New Zealanders, well I'm not sure if the dislike the Australians or the English more, although what was to become marmite was invented by Justus von Liebig.

He knew there would be an argument about eponymous names. In fact he was so indecisive about it, some bloke in Burton on Trent copied it and called it marmite. The Ashes are not what English and Australian cricketers play for. Yup, you guessed it, one bail has marmite, the other has vegemite inside it.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Where's the criticism? When Captain Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands he named them the Sandwich Islands in honour of the Earl of Sandwich, isn't that the English name for the islands?

Just adopt the names as English names, it's so simple and has been done so many times in the past

But they are not English words or names, defeats the stipulated object of having an English language list.

 

[dantheman]

As people have said the Hawaiian names (whilst lovely perhaps) are not memorable at all. I thought there was a campaign mooted to change or maybe it was give alternative 'English' names as there was little or no engagement with the birds on the American continent and thus their conservation plight was being forgotten/ignored. (Funding/publicity etc)

More about practicality/pragmatism than birders sensibilities. I'm sure there is some linguistic science behind this (after early childhood, the type of language patterns you learn are set, so for example using lots of vowels or consonants difficult if not the way you have learnt your mother tongue).

I guess this is an slight aside. To bring this back to the parrotbill, of course native names should be used in Hawaii, but I thought there was an argument for 'English-type' names to be used by English speakers. Or was it a darker thing?

 

[Nightjar61]

I thought one of the stated reasons for getting rid of eponyms was that birds should have more descriptive names. What is descriptive about Ula-ai-hawane or Akohekohe, to name but a few? If I didn’t get these names from the IOC website, I wouldn’t even know they were birds!

Dave

 

[halftwo]

Would you know Pluvel's Illadopsis was a bird, Dave?!

It's strange that, in the rather insular English speaking world, we use English names for all sorts of things, including entire countries, without a second thought. And when anyone has the temerity to point this out we're on our high horses!

 

[Kirk Roth]

But they are not English words or names, defeats the stipulated object of having an English language list.

If I can be so bold, I think the point is that the so-called "Hawaiian" names have become the English names - that has been how the English language has functioned since practically the start of it. Captain Cook and his crew didn't have names for most of these birds on arrival, so they adopted the names that were already in use, rather than inventing something artificially and out of whole cloth. The very fact that these words from a strictly oral language can be written is clear evidence that they've been Anglicized for literally hundreds of years. There hasn't been a so-called "English alternative" because since the late 1700s when an English-speaking person has referred to an Apapane, that's what they've always called it! That word is just as English as the words kookaburra, porcupine, chimpanzee, ginseng, or camouflage.

To me this is no different than so very many other bird names that nobody is batting an eye toward. The New Zealand birds and Latin names have already been mentioned, but by some of the above logic, all of Merlin, Parakeet, Pelican, Heron, and Canary are not English names either - they are French. So much for the English Names For English movement.

 

[Kirk Roth]

The Working Group on Avian Checklists posted this:

Update (January 2024)

Progress on the Checklist

Work is continuing on the Checklist and it expected that the final draft will be completed by late 2024. There will be a period of cross-checking before it is made public in early 2025. As part of the release the summary statements on the decisions made will also be made available.

Common Names

The maintenance and establishment of common names is outside of the scope of our group. Our list will adopt the common names published within the IOC List of Recommended Names as its default. Where other established names are in common usage (in English or any other languages), these will also be presented where possible and appropriate.

Working Group Avian Checklists | International Ornithologists' Union

Working Group Avian Checklists Update (January 2024) Progress on the Checklist Work is continuing on the Checklist and it expected that the final draft will be completed by late 2024. There will be a period of cross-checking before it is made public in early 2025. As part of the release the...

www.internationalornithology.org

 

[Mysticete]

As people have said the Hawaiian names (whilst lovely perhaps) are not memorable at all. I thought there was a campaign mooted to change or maybe it was give alternative 'English' names as there was little or no engagement with the birds on the American continent and thus their conservation plight was being forgotten/ignored. (Funding/publicity etc)

I think you might be getting mixed up with the recent decision to expand the definition of the ABA area to incorporate Hawaii and Midway Atoll. Which in my opinion HAS elevated the visibility of Hawaiian birds, as I see more discussion of them now than I did prior to the move. Worth pointing out that the decision was incredibly controversial at the time, with 40% of the membership voting against the decision and a lot of angry rebuttals and such online over it. A decision that now one cares about anymore, since everyone just got used to it, and the hardcore birders that could afford to visit Gambell every year just added some trips to Hawaii...

I am not aware of any serious move to create an alternative set of "English" names for Hawaiian birds in recent years. Such a move would almost certainly go over like a lead balloon in Hawaii.

 

[Mysticete]

The Working Group on Avian Checklists posted this:

Update (January 2024)

Progress on the Checklist

Work is continuing on the Checklist and it expected that the final draft will be completed by late 2024. There will be a period of cross-checking before it is made public in early 2025. As part of the release the summary statements on the decisions made will also be made available.

Common Names

The maintenance and establishment of common names is outside of the scope of our group. Our list will adopt the common names published within the IOC List of Recommended Names as its default. Where other established names are in common usage (in English or any other languages), these will also be presented where possible and appropriate.

Working Group Avian Checklists | International Ornithologists' Union

Working Group Avian Checklists Update (January 2024) Progress on the Checklist Work is continuing on the Checklist and it expected that the final draft will be completed by late 2024. There will be a period of cross-checking before it is made public in early 2025. As part of the release the...

www.internationalornithology.org

They kind of made a similar statement way back before the eponym wars began, although at that time it was more about things like Arctic Skua vs Parasitic Jaegar (as an obvious example).

I expect that should AOS change a name and ebird runs with it, than the "new names" will probably be listed alongside the old names, at least for the near future.

 

[qwerty5]

I really hope, given the controversy over this decision, and the fact that IOC won't be changing, that eBird will offer an option to opt-in to the new names, rather than just forcing it on the entire globe. It would really lessen the confusion, especially for beginners. And they absolutely must keep the original alpha codes, for a time at least (e.g. WIWA would still bring up Wilson's Warbler, as well as BCWA (Black-capped) or whatever the new name is).

 

[Paul Chapman]

I really hope, given the controversy over this decision, and the fact that IOC won't be changing, that eBird will offer an option to opt-in to the new names, rather than just forcing it on the entire globe. It would really lessen the confusion, especially for beginners. And they absolutely must keep the original alpha codes, for a time at least (e.g. WIWA would still bring up Wilson's Warbler, as well as BCWA (Black-capped) or whatever the new name is).

If they don't leave options available, the quality of eBird data will have a very significant challenge.

All the best

Paul