Standard English names for North American birds will now focus on the animals rather than people
To J. Drew Lanham, a conservation and cultural ornithologist at Clemson University and a lifelong birder, the little brown bird officially called Bachman’s Sparrow has long been the pinewoods sparrow. He hopes that someday the latter name might become official. That change would replace the nod to a slave owner and vocal opponent of abolition and instead honor the sparrow’s own life and the disappearing pine forests through which its song lilts in the Southeastern U.S.
Lanham says it’s the right move. “It’s kind of what we’re taught as scientists: to be circumspect but also to look for the simpler, the truer sorts of solutions,” he says. One of the AOS’s predecessor organization’s already renamed a species as the Long-tailed Duck to eliminate a racist slur in 2000. And in 2020 the AOS removed an eponym that honored a Confederate general and replaced it with the common species name Thick-billed Longspur. Both of those choices faced backlash from those who preferred keeping the established names.
The removal of eponyms might be felt more by birders the farther west they go, says Kenn Kaufman, a bird expert and author of several field guides, who wasn’t involved in the decision. He says that eponymous names became particularly common in the 1800s, by which time scientists had already established names for most species in the eastern parts of the country.
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