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New Name for Oldsquaw



Folks:


I have been following the brouhaha concerning name changes, political
correctness, and kowtowing to the Brits with considerable interest.  He
specially note's Doug DeNeve's comments as follows:


>"I like names that tell you something about the bird, so I like the
change to

>Long-tailed Duck. "Diver" is a good descriptive name, and I wouldn't
mind

>seeing us adopt it instead of "Loon" across the board. I also like
"Grey"

>over "Black-bellied" Plover, for the same reasons someone laid out in
an

>earlier post. The English probably wouldn't understand why we would want
to

>call their Wren a Winter Wren. They'd probably go along with calling it
the

>Common Wren, but that wouldn't make much sense on this side of the
ocean. I

>think we should all call it the Song Wren, personally. That's an apt

>description wherever you are.


I agree with the descritiveness of names.  For a long time I had felt we
had inherited many of these names from the Brits in the first place. 
"Dowitcher" in particular had an old world ring to it, but according to
Christopher Leahy's <italic>The Birdwatcher's Companion</italic>, the
word may actually be a corruption of an Iroquois name for the bird. 
Can't get more American than that.  Although I prefer Great Northern
Diver over Loon, the latter is too far embedded in American folklore and
even idiomatic expressions ("crazy as a loon") to think that it will be
replaced.


I think it takes a lot of hubris to think that bird nomeclature should
revolve around how the names are said in English.  I was fortunate to
live in Sweden for awhile and learning bird names in a foreign language
was instructive.  (Incidentally, I found birders to be much more
knowledgable about Latin binomials than in this country).  For example
they call the Fieldfare a <italic>bjorktrast</italic> (with an umlaut
over the  o), literally a Birch Thrush.  If they saw an accidental
American Robin, it would be called <italic>wandringtrast</italic>, or
Wandering Thrush, a literal translation of the Latin binomial.  But I
don't think the latter would sell in Carolina.


Doug goes on:


>Raptors will provide an interesting debate. We can probably win on
Northern

>Harrier. It's just a good thing we changed it to that a few years 
back.

>Their Marsh Harrier is an impressive bird. The real sticking point,
though,

>will be with the buteos. Can we ever accept Red-Tailed Buzzard?
Broad-winged

>Buzzard? Don't laugh - they already have Rough-legged Buzzards. Over
there,

>only accipiters are called hawks.


I expect the name "buzzard" used so incorrectly in this country is so
ingrained in the frontier ethic of so many Americans that it would be
safe to say it won't be accepted as a name for hawks.  COnservationists
have spent too many years teaching gun nuts not to shoot raptors and
suddenly calling this group "buzzards" will ignite the Davy Crockett
souls of the shooters who equate buzzards=eat dead or nearly dead animals
including, so THEY say, maybe kids and dogs,=shoot the SOB's!


>If there is a push for standardization of English-language names, it's
going

>to cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth on both sides, I'm sure. 
It

>should be quite amusing!


I can't wait.  But I don't think Americans are ready to change their
Chickadee to Carolina Tit.  At least not among the birders :)


Bob Burrell

KDH NC

rburrell@coastalnet.com