Bird Names for Birds

Bird Names for Birds is a campaign to abandon eponyms in taxonomy and honorific common names for birds in an effort to support equity, diversity and inclusion in the American birding community. The campaign was launched in June 2020 with a public petition. It urges the American Ornithological Society to commit to "address the issue of eponymous honors and other potentially derogatory, oppressive, or simply irrelevant holdovers in English common names".

Rhynchophanes mccownii is now named "Thick-billed Longspur" rather than "McCown's Lonspur" by the American Ornithological Society

Background

The American Ornithological Society (AOS) maintains a checklist of birds of North America, and claims responsibility for arbitrating the official common names of birds occurring in this area.[1] Proposals for name changes can be submitted to the North American Classification and Nomenclature Committee (NACC) of the AOS.[2] The Bird Names for Birds websites notes several notable past proposals, including a rejected proposal to change the name of Maui Parrotbill to a newly created name in the Hawaiian language, and a proposal to change the name of Oldsquaw to Long-tailed Duck.[3] This latter proposal was accepted, but the comments on the decision by NACC stated that considerations of "political correctness" alone were not enough to merit a name change.[4] In 2018, Robert Driver, a graduate student at East Carolina University, filed a proposal to the NACC, requesting that they change the English common name used for McCown's longspur, named after Confederate general John Porter McCown. The proposal was rejected by NACC citing the need to maintain stability in naming conventions but also deferring the matter to further discussion.[5]

In 2020, following weeks of widespread "Black Lives Matter" protests following the killing of George Floyd and calls for racial justice in the United States, Confederate monuments and memorials were toppled by protesters or removed by city officials across the country. After the Central Park birdwatching incident led to initiatives like Black Birders Week, increasing attention was paid to eponymous bird names, particularly those honoring historical figures with links to slavery.[6]

Campaign
The AOS changed the name of this species from "oldsquaw" to "long-tailed duck" in 2000.

On June 22, 2020, the Bird Names for Birds campaign was launched through a letter to the American Ornithological Society, penned by ornithologists Gabriel Foley and Jordan Rutter, and co-signed by 180 other individuals.[7] The co-founders of the initiative argue that "honorific names cast long, dark shadows over our beloved birds and represent colonialism, racism and inequality. It is long overdue that we acknowledge the problem of such names, and it is long overdue that we should change them."[8] Besides McCown's longspur, other common bird names with problematic eponymous or honorific references mentioned by the campaign include Bachman's sparrow, Townsend's warbler, Bendire's thrasher, and Hammond's flycatcher. By August 2020, over 2,300 individuals had signed the petition, which received formal support by the American Bird Conservancy.[9]

On July 24, 2020, a second proposal to change the McCown's longspur's name was submitted to NACC by Robert Driver and by NACC chair and Smithsonian researcher Terry Chesser, after consulting with the AOS Diversity and Inclusion Committee.[10]

Response

On July 8, 2020, AOS president Kathy Martin announced that the society's leadership was developing "new society-level policies in our nomenclature", and that next steps would be formally announced during the 2020 edition of the society's annual conference.[11] On August 7, 2020, NACC announced the decision to change the common name of Rhynchophanes mccownii from McCown's longspur to thick-billed longspur, as a literal translation of its genus name, Rhynchophanes,[12] following a unanimous vote.[10] The organizers of the Bird Names for Birds campaign welcomed the decision, but emphasized the need to address other 149 common bird names that they consider equally problematic.[13]

Precedents

Concerns about the legacy of eponyms in science have been raised in a variety of disciplines. Medical eponyms associated with Nazi human experimentation or Nazi politics have long fallen out of favor or have been selectively deprecated by the medical community. Since 2007, the Israel Medical Association Journal[14] and European Neurology[15] have maintained lists of eponyms honoring Nazis and their collaborators. Some physicians have argued the use of eponyms in the medical nomenclature should be discontinued altogether,[16] while others have argued that such eponyms should be retained as "a means of conveying immortal dishonor."[17]

In 2015 the Swedish Ornithological Society completed its first global list of over 10,000 Swedish bird names and, through the process, decided to remove a number of potentially offensive names it had identified.[18]

The 2020 protests against racism further encouraged academic institutions and scholarly societies to remove potentially offensive references from journal names or academic prizes.[19] In August 2020, NASA announced the decision to deprecate widely used nicknames for a number of astronomical objects, stating that "they are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful." In a press release, the agency said that Eskimo is "widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the Indigenous people of Arctic regions." The decision established that planetary nebula NGC 2392, historically known as the "Eskimo Nebula", among other astronomical objects, should be uniquely referred to by their catalog numbers.[20]

See also

References
  1. "Guidelines for English Bird Names". American Ornithological Society. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  2. "Checklist of North and Middle American Birds". American Ornithological Society. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  3. "Rejected NACC Proposals". Bird Names For Birds. 2020-07-11. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  4. "FORTY-SECOND SUPPLEMENT TO THE AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGISTS' UNION CHECK-LIST OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS" (PDF). The Auk. 117 (3): 847-858. 2000. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  5. Thomasy, Hannah. "A bird named for a Confederate general sparks calls for change". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  6. Thomasy, Hannah (2020-07-21). "A Bird Named for a Confederate General Sparks Calls for Change". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  7. Roach, April (2020-08-05). "Ornithologists call for 'birds named after racists' to be changed". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  8. Foley, Gabriel; Rutter, Jordan (2020-08-04). "The stench of colonialism mars these bird names. They must be changed". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  9. "Creating a More Just, Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Bird Community". American Bird Conservancy. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  10. Mendenhall, Matt. "McCown's Longspur renamed Thick-billed Longspur". BirdWatching. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  11. "What's in a name? More than you might think..." American Ornithological Society. 2020-07-08. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  12. "2020 Proposals". American Ornithological Society. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  13. Cahan, Eli (August 11, 2020). "In reversal, ornithologists yank Confederate general's name from bird". Science. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  14. Strous, Rael D.; Morris C. Edelman (March 2007). "Eponyms and the Nazi Era: Time to Remember and Time For Change" (PDF). Israel Medical Association Journal. 9 (3): 207–214. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
  15. Kondziella, Daniel (2009). "Thirty Neurological Eponyms Associated with the Nazi Era". European Neurology. 62 (1): 56–64. doi:10.1159/000215880. PMID 19407456.
  16. Woywodt, Alexander; Eric Matteson (2007). "Should Eponyms be Abandoned? Yes". British Medical Journal. 335 (7617): 424. doi:10.1136/bmj.39308.342639.AD. PMC 1962844. PMID 17762033. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
  17. Leach, John Paul (April 24, 2003). "Correspondence: Hallervorden and History". The New England Journal of Medicine. 348 (17): 1725–1726. doi:10.1056/NEJM200304243481721. PMID 12711755.
  18. Noack, Rick (24 February 2015). "Out of fear of racism, Sweden changes the names of bird species". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  19. Cahan, Eli (2020-07-02). "Amid protests against racism, scientists move to strip offensive names from journals, prizes, and more". Science. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  20. "NASA drops 'colonial' nicknames for distant cosmic objects". CBC. 2020-08-07. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
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