New bird names are like a bad virus attack ~
they come uninvited and leave a trail of dead books behind
A few weeks back I received a request for bird
images from a leading publisher. A quick look at the list and I
figured that I did not have many in my collection. That surprised me
as I had always thought that I was well stocked in diversity at
least and know my bird names. But a 'Kurrichane Buttonquail' or a 'Brown
Bush-hen' may well have been birds that occur in deepest
Tasmania as far as I was concerned.
Welcome to very special activity
of 'Common (English) Bird Name Changes' – an almost ritualistic
obsession for those who spend time or make a living from birds and
bird related activities.
However, before you start looking for a
Tasmania bird list let me quickly take the pain out – both these are
well known birds that occur in India. The 1st
is popularly known as Small Buttonquail, Turnix sylvatica and
the 2nd
is the Brown Crake, Amaurornis akool.
That the Small Buttonquail could be the 'Little Bustard-quail' to
some or the 'Andalusian Hemipode' to others is neither here or
there. Just goes to show how vigorous and dynamic the whole bird
naming process is! (Incidentally, the Brown Crake
is no less popular with re-namers. At different times and places it has been variously
referred to as the Brown Swamphen,
Crimson-legged Crake, Brown Waterhen – and this is by those who use
English only!)
Standard (English) names are
in common usage and apply to everything around us. They are there to
facilitate communication across English speaking people and are
expected to cut across barriers of distance and culture. By and
large the use of
standard English names has
succeeded. I say 'by and large' because some still insist that
'check' is the same as a 'cheque' and 'roos' are incorrectly called
kangaroos.
I am not a linguist nor am I
anything close to a scientist – so my thoughts are of a common man
dealing with common things and concerned about common usage of
common names. A typical common birder in short. One of the common enough thoughts
that I had was that to succeed
in communicating there has to be enduring commonness. If my dad
called a chair a chair, I will find it easier to remember that I am
sitting on a chair as I type this. Thus, everyone understands that a
tiger is a large carnivore with stripes and some even know that it
is found in Asia outside of circuses and zoos. Should we choose to
rename the tiger as the 'Sundarbans Striped Lion', a name very
descriptive (tigers are found in the Sundarbans, have stripes and
are sympatric with lions) - we would instantly loose the commonness
associated with the word 'tiger' though we may have a more
appropriate name. If we agree that a tiger is not a lion and that I
am making a wild comparison - then
please bear with me and read on. There is a common bird belonging to
the starling family found in the subcontinent and South-east Asia.
It was known to all as the Asian Pied Starling (Sturnus contra)
describing aptly its south and south-east Asian range, its pied
appearance and its sturnus (or starling ) family classification. The
bird is now renamed a 'Pied Myna' perhaps in light of new scientific
thinking that suggests its strong affinities with the myna family* .
That the acridotheres family is considered to be related to the
starlings, and is indeed a offshoot of the same family is the final
twist in this naming game's tail. The tiger is related to the lion
and since just striped lion is not descriptive enough, a 'Sundarbans
Striped Lion' would be an easy and logical step for scientists or
taxonomists who give us these names. So my suggestion may not be as
stretched as it sounds, at least not when it comes to bird names.
Here appropriateness, as decided by some, rules - not what is commonly used.
Bird renaming it seems is
not a task, but a passion. Year after year birds are renamed by
whoever has the ability to get anything printed. Some birds are
particularly at risk and go through name changes as fast as their
numbers decline. The only relief for them may be extinction – but
that may still not be 'name-change' relief for us. We may suddenly be
told that it was not a yuhina that went extinct - but was an epornis
all the time! I am still waiting for someone to propose that the
Dodo is entirely inappropriate (especially as there are some
suggestions that the etymology of the word 'dodo' may have
derogatory connotations associated with it) and the bird should
certainly be called a 'Mauritius Flightless Pigeon' and we will soon
learn that 'as dead as a Mauritius Flightless' is more appropriate usage over 'as dead as a dodo'. It is coming, believe me!
And the sad thing is
there was no need for this! No one has started calling the Clouded
Leopard a Clouded Large Cat just because it is evident that
Neofelis nebulosa
belongs to the pantherinae family rather than being a true felidae
like lions, leopards, tigers etc. It is a common or standard name which goes
with the animal and no improvement in communication and
understanding will be achieved by renaming it. In fact renaming it
would loose the commonness associated with the name. Such maturity,
however, is unexpected from people who name birds. Birds are often
renamed by those who work for years on papers which read like 'Intercondylar
fossa analysis of cage bred common mynas under laboratory conditions'
. They may not know the distinction between a sparrow and a petronia
(sorry, the petronia is now a sparrow again, my apologies) but are
deemed knowledgeable enough about the wide subject to be able to
contribute with authority and exclusivity on name changes even when
they may often be the least qualified for the job (and active field scientists
have little time for these things anyway).
There are others too in
the naming game - top field scientists, people who are legends in
their lifetime. They too propose names and often these appear in new
books written by them. But their good work is usually upstaged in the final
analysis by the laboratory experts who draw strength from numbers
and seem to use
Machiavellian
tactics when it comes to getting what they want. Add to this the
bias of those who invented the language, the fierce independence of
those who use it and the big money involved in all this, and it is
easy to reach the conclusion that bird renaming is a mug's game for
the innocent bystander – you loose all the time! Buy new books,
learn to pronounce kurrichane,
get stinkers from e-group moderators for using old names – dear
common birder, you may not realize it, but you have been had!
And
we do
nothing about it, of course, as we only care about birds – least the
who, why, what of renaming them. Because if we did, we would have
stood up and said that it is wrong to rename the Great Crested Tern
as the Swift Tern just to please those who are accustomed to using
that name. For if the decision makers had been following common sense, had field
experience and were not biased, they would have first renamed the
Lesser Crested Tern the Lesser Swift Tern to reflect that the birds
are almost indistinguishable in the field. How on earth can you
expect an amateur birder or enthusiast to remember that two
identical species are so differently named? But you see it is not a
re-namer's problem. Those who chose the name Swift Tern had only
have one species to deal with or care about.
And if you thought that
the exercise is aimed at making everyone speak the same language,
you are right. Except it may be someone else's language. Take this
example: The
Himalaya has four species of Bush Robins all belonging to the
tarsiger family and descriptively named to aid identification - like
Golden Bush Robin to highlight the bright yellow colours of the
bird. Unfortunately, some of these little birds chose to stray from
their secure mountain kingdom all the way to Europe and were promptly named the
Red-flanked Bluetail there. Their relatives in the Himalaya meanwhile
continued to be called Orange-flanked Bush Robins reflecting their
affinity with other members of the family and also appropriately
recognizing that the tail colour was not a diagnostic feature in the
Indian/Asian context. But this was too good to last - a red rag to
bird re-namers. Red-flanked Bluetail was an established standard name - how could the Himalayan
bird be called a Bush Robin? It beat all logic and was
scientifically corrected as Himalayan Bluetail even though, thanks
to a split, taxonomically it no longer remained the same species as the European
bird and could very well have retained its popular name without
conflict. So here is the logic - the Swift Tern has to remain the
Swift Tern because some use it. By the same logic the Bush Robin has
to be renamed a Bluetail because it is in common usage for some
others, appropriateness or the user's problems be damned. And such
myopic thinking may well affect birders in other English speaking
countries as well - after all
'Kurrichane'
may not be an everyday word in New Zealand or Scotland ! These examples about sum up the
methodology, fairness and usefulness of the renaming exercise for me
- you are, of course, free to draw your own conclusions.
So,
dear common birder, how do you feel about bird name changes? Do you think
that these exercises are more in the nature of arriving at 'New
Appropriate Names' rather than standardizing 'Common Names'? These are
questions which will not be answered before the next set of 'New
Standard Bird Names' appear on the horizon and it is my ardent hope
that such a thing should not happen. Good or bad, this must be the last exercise
to change existing standard names of birds – if for nothing else but
for the sake of the common birder who has to keep on dealing with
uncommon names for common birds.
Szechenyi's Monal-Partridge for
dinner, anyone?
Sumit K.
Sen
Edit:
*
(Or
perhaps, as a reader mentions, to restore an old name!)
There are about 10,000 bird species and the same number of
reptiles in the world. A google
search with search text ' bird name changes' returned 739,000
hits while the one with 'reptile name changes' returned
263,000 hits
|
Kurrichane stands at an elevation of 5,000 feet and is 480 kms
from Maputo Bay area of South Africa.
Turnix sylvatica
occurs in the area.
Reference:
History of the British Colonies -
Robert Montgomery Martin
|
Results of a poll
run from Sep 08 to Oct 09
Some other views
1. 10,000 Birds:
Good, Bad, and Ugly of the IOC Recommended
English Names
2. Marine Ornithology:
Birds of the world: Recommended English names
3. Aimophila Adventures:
Gill & Wright, Birds of the world: Recommended
English names
IOC
names for birds occurring in India
Note: The views
contained here are of the author alone and does not reflect the website's
opinion on the matter.
The author would like to hear about any comments
that you may have and he can be contacted at
sumitsen@rediffmail.com
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