Yet another thread on eponyms... But this one might actually be fun! (1 Viewer)

[Maffong]

Something I have found valuable in this thread is a growing awareness of just how many alternative names many species have collected.

Most of these names are my own creations, although I'm certain many more have existed in the past that I didn't unearth

 

[andrew147]

December 19th:
Last batch of warblers...

Moltoni’s Warbler (Curruca subalpina)
Edgardo Moltoni (1896 -1980), Italian ornithologist who worked in the Natural History Museum at Milan.

Alternative names: Liguria (Subalpine) Warbler, Salmon-breasted Warbler, Buzzing (Subalpine) Warbler, Churring (Subalpine) Warbler

A little confusing that Curruca subalpina is not Subalpine Warbler, so maybe we could put that bit back into the name?

Marmora’s Warbler (Curruca sarda)
Alberto Ferrero La Marmora (or Della Marmora; 1789 –1863), Italian soldier and naturalist.

Alternative names: Slate-grey Warbler, Bluish Warbler, Tyrrhenian Warbler, Corsican Warbler

Sardinian Warbler is unfortunately already taken by a species that occurs through much of the Mediterranean region, but other fitting names can be thought of for what is currently Marmora’s Warbler.

For me: Ligurian Warbler | Tyrrhenian Warbler

 

[cajanuma]

For me: Ligurian Warbler | Tyrrhenian Warbler

Liguria is on the margins of the range of Moltoni's, and Western Subalpine breeds there as well (possibly the occasional Eastern as well) so of the two Tyrrhenian works best (if you can spell it, that is)

 

[cajanuma]

Initially, actually, Subalpine was split into two species only, Subalpine & Moltoni's; and back then the latter was thought to breed on the islands only, thus did not deserve the name "Subalpine".

It's true that the initial split was into two, but it was the discovery that Moltoni's (and not Subalpine) was the taxon breeding in much of continental northern Italy that prompted the studies that led to the split.

 

[lesjumelles]

You’ve probably heard of eponyms, those bird names that include a person’s name, such as ‘Cory’s Shearwater’ or ‘Temminck’s Stint’. Well, I don’t like them. There’s recently been a heated debate over eponyms, mostly in North America, because it’s been brought up that some people who are being honoured in bird’s names, don’t really deserve this privilege. This was the main line of reasoning by the ‘Bird Names for Birds’ campaign (BN4B) which ultimately resulted in the American Ornithological Society deciding that they would replace all eponymous bird names with new ones. While I approve the result, I’m not entirely a big fan of the reasoning nor in how it was communicated to the general public. While some cases are clear-cut, most are not and people who contributed greatly to our understanding of the birds of the world are being demonised for the wrong reasons.

I dislike eponyms for other reasons. My main concern is that eponyms bear no intrinsic meaning. Do you have any idea what ‘Verreaux’s Batis’ looks or acts like? Can you tell me anything about ‘Stephanie’s Astrapia’ or ‘Turner’s Eremomela’? These are examples of particularly meaningless names. With ‘Sabine’s Gull’ you’ll at least know that it’s a gull and ‘Levaillant’s Woodpecker’ likes to peck wood. But you got that info from the second part of their names, not the first eponymous part. I wonder if any person reading this text can tell me anything about the people being commemorated in the aforementioned bird names - without looking them up, of course.

Obviously, many people honoured in eponyms were important naturalists who contributed to our understanding of our environment. But any beginner birder or layperson will not know anything about them and most ornithologists and birders won’t be bothered to investigate the matter. This is the reason I dislike eponyms. It wouldn’t be false to say that I’m too lazy and uneducated to appreciate eponyms. I’m okay with that. I don’t want to research people who are long dead, however I want bird names to tell me something about the bird I’m watching, or at least the name should be cool. No idea, why the Rifleman is called that, but it’s a badass name. While I don’t know where the term Dunlin comes from, I know a guy who was named after the bird. That’s much more to my liking! A Pink-footed Goose is probably identifiable through its pink feet, a Marsh Owl to be searched in marshes and Siberian Rubythroat in Siberia. These names may not always be perfect, but I like them, there’s immediately a picture or even a scenery in my head, when talking about them. Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse? Boyd’s Shearwater? Menetries’s Warbler? Nothing, no image, no scenery. I get that some birds are hard to name. Dozens of lookalike Storm Petrels or Larks that might even overlap in range aren’t easy to name creatively. But how much cooler would Wavehopper be than Wilson’s Storm Petrel?

In North America a process to rename all eponymous birds has started. While I may not always be on board with the reasons nor the process how things went, I’m all in for the results. Therefore, I’d like similar things to happen elsewhere. It’s okay, if you disagree with me and want things to stay as they are, because you’ve gotten used to how it is. I have no jurisdiction over bird naming anywhere in the world and likely won’t change anything anywhere, but I enjoy the thought-process of finding better, more evocative bird names. Meanwhile, I may learn a thing or two about the birds AND the people commemorated in their names.



Searching for the term >‘s < in the current IOC list of English bird names (v. 14.2) returns 815 eponymous names out of 11276 species (7.2%) with a handful of eponyms like Blackburnian Warbler or (arguably) Barolo Shearwater remaining hidden from this amateurish research. That’s a little too many for me and for now. But looking only at the list of birds recorded in the Western Palaearctic (WP) the list shrinks down to 102 taxa, many of these extralimital vagrants, some not even full species.

The following list should (hopefully) encompass all eponymous taxa recorded in the WP. It’s split into a list of species regularly occur in the WP and those that are mainly extralimital (including some introduced species). These categorizations are not perfect but are very rough approximation of what species a WP authority may have some kind of jurisdiction over (in theory) and which should better be left to naming authorities elsewhere. The line between Western and Eastern Palaearctic birds is especially blurry.

Extralimitals
Ross’s Goose	Schrenck’s Bittern	Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler
Bewick’s Swan	Thayer’s Gull	Preuss’s Swallow
Reeves’s Pheasant	Forster’s Tern	Blyth’s Whitethroat
Lady Amherst’s Pheasant	Cabot’s Tern	Hume’s Whitethroat
Erckel’s Spurfowl	Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel	Swainson’s Thrush
Bruce’s Green Pigeon	Barau's Petrel	Tickell’s Thrush
Pallas’s Sandgrouse	Jouanin’s Petrel	Naumann’s Thrush
Allen’s Gallinule	Abdim’s Stork	Hume’s Wheatear
Swinhoe’s Snipe	Rüppell’s Griffon	Rüppell’s Weaver
Wilson’s Snipe	Wahlberg’s Eagle	Blyth’s Pipit
Wilson’s Phalarope	Verreaux’s Eagle	Pallas’s Rosefinch
Baird’s Sandpiper	Pallas’s Fish Eagle	Lincoln’s Sparrow
Bonaparte’s Gull	Alexandrine Parakeet	Blackburnian Warbler
Franklin’s Gull	Hume’s Lark	Wilson’s Warbler
Kumlien’s Gull	Gray’s Grasshopper Warbler

For the WP birds, I’d like and try to come up with better non-eponymous names. These are sometimes influenced by existing names in other languages than English. Most are my own ideas; other more apt names may already exist that I’m not aware of.

Just like an advent calendar, from December 1st until December 24th I will post a couple of WP birds with (currently) eponymous names and some suggestions for new names. Your feedback or better ideas are appreciated.

How DARE those people in the 1700s and 1800s not have a crystal ball good enough to inform them that some majority opinions of their era would be different from those of some people in the 21st century. Perhaps it would be useful for us to ponder what people back then would think about our society today, with sky-high divorce and illegitimacy rates and wide-spread acceptance of practices viewed as abhorrent back in their era. How DARE they!

 

[Maffong]

December 20th:
Enough with the warblers, onwards with two nice birds from the southeast, at least from I live...

Krüper’s Nuthatch (Sitta krueperi)
Theobald Johannes Krüper (1829-1921), German ornithologist, collector in Lapland, Iceland, Greece and Turkey.

Alternative names: Chestnut-bibbed Nuthatch, Anatolian Nuthatch, Turkish Nuthatch, Bleeding-heart Nuthatch

I tried to come up with an evocative name referencing the ecology of the species but failed. Perhaps someone has an idea? Anyhow, the available options seem good to me.

Tristram’s Starling (Onychognathus tristramii)
Revd. Henry Baker Tristram (1822-1906), Canon of Durham, traveller, naturalist, antiquarian, early supporter of Darwin.

Alternative names: Orange-winged Starling, Arabian Starling, Desert Starling, Dead Sea Starling

Given that there’s already Pale-winged, Chestnut-winged and Red-winged Starling in the genus Onychognathus, Orange-winged Starling would fit in just perfectly.

 

[wheatearlp]

December 20th:
Enough with the warblers, onwards with two nice birds from the southeast, at least from I live...

Krüper’s Nuthatch (Sitta krueperi)
Theobald Johannes Krüper (1829-1921), German ornithologist, collector in Lapland, Iceland, Greece and Turkey.

Alternative names: Chestnut-bibbed Nuthatch, Anatolian Nuthatch, Turkish Nuthatch, Bleeding-heart Nuthatch

I tried to come up with an evocative name referencing the ecology of the species but failed. Perhaps someone has an idea? Anyhow, the available options seem good to me.

Tristram’s Starling (Onychognathus tristramii)
Revd. Henry Baker Tristram (1822-1906), Canon of Durham, traveller, naturalist, antiquarian, early supporter of Darwin.

Alternative names: Orange-winged Starling, Arabian Starling, Desert Starling, Dead Sea Starling

Given that there’s already Pale-winged, Chestnut-winged and Red-winged Starling in the genus Onychognathus, Orange-winged Starling would fit in just perfectly.

Of these, if I had to chose, I would prefer Bleeding-heart Nuthatch & Orange-winged Starling.

 

[andrew147]

I tried to come up with an evocative name referencing the ecology of the species but failed. Perhaps someone has an idea? Anyhow, the available options seem good to me.

Pinecone Nuthatch? Restive or Restless Nuthatch?

I have Turkish Nuthatch and Arabian Starling for these two - as names that have been in use already.

 

[Maffong]

December 21st:

White’s Thrush (Zoothera aurea)
Gilbert White (1720 –1793), "parson-naturalist", pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist.

Alternative names: Golden Thrush, Bronzy Thrush, Scale-backed Thrush, Taiga Thrush, Boreal Thrush

My preferred name - Scaly Thrush – was assigned to Zoothera dauma, so isn’t available. But Golden Thrush would be an equally awesome name.

Moussier’s Redstart (Phoenicurus moussieri)
Surgeon-Maj. Jean Moussier (1795-1869), French Army, with the Foreign Legion in Algeria 1846-1847, physician, naturalist, collector.

Alternative names: Diademed Redstart, Barbary Redstart, Atlas Redstart

I really like Diademed Redstart, which is a literal translation from the German name, but would be okay with the other options too.

 

[andrew147]

Moussier’s Redstart (Phoenicurus moussieri)

Has also been called Coroneted Redstart in the past - but I don't like that, your options are all preferable.

 

[Maffong]

December 22nd:
Just two more days to go

Finsch’s Wheatear (Oenanthe finschii)
Prof. Dr Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (1839-1917), German diplomat, ornithologist, collector.

Alternative names: White-backed Wheatear, Rock Wheatear, Boulder Wheatear

Wheatears are birds that I find particularly difficult to remember, which species is which. The name White-backed Wheatear would help with this one at least.

Radde’s Accentor (Prunella ocularis)
Gustav Ferdinand Richard Radde (1831 –1903), German naturalist and Siberian explorer.

Alternative names: Cream-throated Accentor, Buff-breasted Accentor, Rock Accentor, Kurdistan/Kurdish Accentor, Turkish Accentor

There is considerable overlap in this bird’s range with the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan, which has no official boundaries. Nevertheless, Cream-throated Accentor would be my favourite.

 

[gusasp]

Love this thread! Apologies for a lengthy post, but here are my takes on the species mentioned up to now. Quite a few lean heavily towards English translations of the names in Swedish (marked with *)

+Steller’s Eider - Painted Eider (love this, few birds are as painted as a male Steller's Eider)
+Barrow’s Goldeneye - Crescent Goldeneye
+Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse - Vermiculated Sandgrouse
+Bolle’s Pigeon - Canary Islands Pigeon*
+Baillon’s Crake - Dwarf Crake*
+Kittlitz’s Plover - Shepherd Plover* (Cattle Plover also a good name)
+Temminck’s Stint - White-tailed Stint (unique feature among Calidris; Swedish name mosnäppa hard to translate)
+Saunders’s Tern - Arabian Tern
+Ross’s Gull - Rosy Gull*
+Sabine’s Gull - Tern Gull*
+Pallas’s Gull - Great Black-headed Gull*(already existing name)
+Audouin’s Gull - Coral-billed Gull (Coral Gull associates with a coral habitat and many gulls have black eyes)
+Heuglin’s Gull - Tundra Gull*
+Wilson’s Storm Petrel - Searunner* (or Common Searunner and change all the Oceanitidae Storm Petrels to searunners, to emphasize them not being close to Hydrobatidae)
+Monteiro’s Storm Petrel - Azorean Storm Petrel*
+Leach’s Storm Petrel - Boreal Storm Petrel
Zino’s Petrel - Madeira Petrel*
+Fea’s Petrel - Cape Verde Petrel*
+Cory’s Shearwater - Atlantic Yellow-billed +Scopoli’s Shearwater - Mediterranean Yellow-billed Shearwater
+Barolo Shearwater - Macaronesian Shearwater*
+Boyd’s Shearwater - Small Cape Verde Shearwater (Calonectris edwardsi becomes Large Cape Verde Shearwater. Cape Verde Little Shearwater for boydi sounds like a local population of Little Shearwater)
+Bonelli’s Eagle - Goshawk Eagle (I see no problem in the describer not being a food source, as we have Hawk-Eagles as it also is called in Swedish – preoccupied in English of course by Nisaetus and Spizaetus)
+Montagu’s Harrier - Meadow Harrier*
+Levaillant’s Woodpecker - Atlas Green Woodpecker*
+Eleonora’s Falcon - Mediterranean Falcon*
+Temminck’s Lark - Desert Horned Lark*
+Hume’s Lark - Tibetan Short-toed Lark (akin to Mongolian Short-toed)*
+Dupont’s Lark - Dawn Lark (or Dusk Lark, but too close to Dusky Lark)
+Dunn’s Lark - Sahara Lark
+Thekla’s Lark - Bushtop Lark
+Cetti’s Warbler - Silky Bush Warbler (many Cettidae warblers have explosive songs and rusty backs, lovely name in German among others)
+Hume’s Warbler - Buff-browed Warbler (already in use, complementing Yellow-browed Warbler)
+Western Bonelli’s Warbler - Oak Warbler (associates with oaks; Alpine not good as it breeds down to sea level)
+Eastern Bonelli’s Warbler - Balkan Warbler*
*Pallas’s Warbler - Kinglet Warbler (Kinglet better than Goldcrest, as it associates with Regulidae in general rather than to the particular species)
+Radde’s Warbler - Sallow Warbler*
+Sykes’s Warbler - Saxaul Warbler*
+Upcher’s Warbler - Orchard Warbler (tail-wagging difficult to include in a name)
+Blyth’s Reed Warbler - Thicket Warbler (no need to include Reed, see for instance Marsh Warbler)
+Savi’s Warbler - Locust or Cicada Warbler (Reedbed too close to Reed)
+Tristram’s Warbler - Atlas Warbler*
+Ménétrie’s Warbler - Tamarisk Warbler
+Rüppell’s Warbler - Black-chinned Warbler*
+Moltoni’s Warbler - Rosy Warbler
+Marmora’s Warbler - Slaty Warbler
+Krüper’s Nuthatch - Turkish Nuthatch
+Tristram’s Starling - Arabian Starling
+White’s Thrush - Golden Thrush*
+Moussier’s Redstart - Diademed Redstart*
+Finsch’s Wheatear - White-backed Wheatear*
+Radde’s Accentor - Black-crowned Accentor* (Kurdistan great, but not perfect when Yemen Accentor is included)

 

[Björn Bergenholtz]

...
*Temminck’s Stint - White-tailed Stint (unique feature among Calidris; Swedish name mosnäppa hard to translate)
...

The mo- part of the Swedish name mosnäppa (for Calidris temminckii) originates in the Swedish word mo, for a barren heath (similar to moor).

Not that hard to translate ...

 

[gusasp]

The Swedish name mosnäppa for Calidris temminckii originates in the Swedish word mo, for heath (similar to moor).

Not that hard to translate ...

Ah, I thought it referred to the earth type (fine-grained sand). Heath not very fitting for the habitat though.

 

[Björn Bergenholtz]

... Heath not very fitting for the habitat though.

True, but less so if we're thinking of its breeding grounds, on a fjällhed, as in the heaths of fjällen, in the North, in the Scandes/Scandinavian Mountains.

Compare with the Swedish name moripa [for the long-debated Scottish (Red) Grouse Lagopus (lagopus) scotica], from the moors of Scotland. The latter have earlier (in English) also been called; 'Moorbird', 'Moorcock' or 'Moorfowl'.

 

[Maffong]

December 23rd:

Richard’s Pipit (Anthus richardi)
Charles Richard (1745-1835), French director of postal services, Lunéville, collector.

Alternative names: Long-legged Pipit, Long-clawed Pipit, Spurred Pipit, Russian Pipit, Steppe Pipit

While the German Spurred Pipit accurately describes a helpful ID feature, I’d prefer Long-legged Pipit, even if that name could also apply to some other species such as Blyth’s Pipit (which could become Mongolian or Steppe Pipit).

Berthelot’s Pipit (Anthus berthelotii)
Lt. Sabin Berthelot (1794-1880), French Navy, mariner, malacologist, ethnologist, Consul on Tenerife 1848-1874.

Alternative names: Canary Pipit, White-bellied Pipit, Cream-coloured Pipit

While Canary Pipit seems like an obvious choice, which is e.g. already the name in many other languages, it’s also one of the more distinct pipits and names could also be based on appearance.

 

[Markus Lagerqvist]

December 23rd:

Richard’s Pipit (Anthus richardi)
Charles Richard (1745-1835), French director of postal services, Lunéville, collector.

Alternative names: Long-legged Pipit, Long-clawed Pipit, Spurred Pipit, Russian Pipit, Steppe Pipit

While the German Spurred Pipit accurately describes a helpful ID feature, I’d prefer Long-legged Pipit, even if that name could also apply to some other species such as Blyth’s Pipit (which could become Mongolian or Steppe Pipit).

Long-legged Pipit is already used for Anthus pallidiventris.

 

[l_raty]

Alternative names: Canary Pipit, White-bellied Pipit, Cream-coloured Pipit

In recent times, birds named after the islands (the Stonechat, Chiffchaff, Chaffinch, Oystercatcher) have generally been called "Canary Islands" something.
In birds simply called "Canary" something (Canary Flyrobin, Canary White-eye), "canary" is the bird's colour.

 

[andrew147]

Richard’s Pipit (Anthus richardi)
Berthelot’s Pipit (Anthus berthelotii)

Great Pipit & Macaronesian Pipit for me.

 

[cajanuma]

Great Pipit

Calandro maggiore in Italian, which translates as Greater Pipit (Calandro's actually a bit more specific as it refers to Tawny Pipit and close relatives)