In an op-ed in the Washington Post ornithologists Gabriel Foley and Jordan Rutter argue that birds named for individuals, i.e. “eponymous” names for birds”, should be renamed:
When we name an animal species after the person who first made it known to science, we are effectively honoring that person’s contribution. Unlike a name describing a bird’s color or habitat, there is nothing “natural†about honorific names: They imply a choice, and we can also choose not to honor the person whose name has been affixed to the species. Bachman’s sparrow, Townsend’s warbler, Bendire’s thrasher, Hammond’s flycatcher, McCown’s longspur — these are all examples of North American common bird names. For the bird community — ornithologists, bird-watchers, conservationists and more — these names are collectively referenced every day. For many, the esteem inherent in these names is unconsciously overlooked, and comfort lies in their familiarity.
Yet these honorific names — known as eponyms — also 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.
I would bet that 9,999 of 10,000 readers who hear the words “Townsend’s warbler” would have no idea it was named for someone with a reprehensible past. As long as consciousness-raising exercises are eschewed, it seems to me the harm is very, very limited.
Oral language allows us to exchange information with each other. Written language allows us to exchange information across time and space. Eliminating names that have been accepted and standard for years, in some cases for centuries, necessarily means that everything written about them in the past would become incomprehensible.
This loss would not be limited to a handful of obscure bird names. It would be applicable to hundreds of thousands of names of birds, animals, plants, physical phenomena, place names, mathematical and philosophical terms, and every field of human knowledge. The gain from such renaming would be minor; the loss would be incalculable.
6And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
This was my main reaction to Sierra Club’s cancellation of John Muir — I doubt his 150 year old travel logs could “continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club” unless the Sierra Club is handing out special pamphlets highlighting his problematic descriptions embedded a few places within his vast writings on nature. It like Sierra Club publicized a problem heretofore unknown, and patted itself on the back for solving it within the same press release.
This I believe is the article that prompted the latest Woke pile-on against natural history:
https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/news/birdwatching/racial-justice-new-push-rename-birds/
I suggest Mr. Foley and Mr. Rutter provide an example of Supreme Wokeness by changing their own names, both first and last, to something more Woke, like maybe Marx or Lenin or Mao or Pol Pot. Because almost without a doubt people in the past named Foley and Rutter were either slave owners, engaged in the slave trade, mistreated Indians, or engaged in other unspeakable acts against BIPOCS (Black, Indigenous, or other People Of Color). Ditto people named Gabriel and Jordan.
These bullying a**holes are comparing everybody and everything both past and present to a mythical and unattainable paragon of wokeness and demanding their destruction when they naturally fall short of mutable perfection. They themselves of course are not to be compared thusly, because unlike you and me they are Woke and have no need for correction by Deplorables.
What’s worse are ‘authorities’ who grovel before them and obey their dictates, because to be accused of being a ‘racist’ is an indelible mark of evil so profound and deep that no ritual of abnegation can ever wipe out the stain.
Who gave these bastards the right to call you and me racist and the authority to make it stick? What proof do they have of it besides their own assertions? They are smear artists, pure and simple, who take their cue from the likes of race hustlers like Al Sharpton.
They cannot be reasoned with. Therefore the only way to deal with them is to not reason with them but to give them powerful and energetic examples why they should not be so unreasonable and dictatorial. Then maybe they might learn to be more reasonable in their speech and actions.
Society becomes polite not because people are naturally good, but from fear of the consequences of being impolite.
Seems like a contest to see who can find the next group of names to go after. I can understand that a lot of the statues were put up in the 1900s, well past the Civil War and were intended to offend black people so taking those down made sense, though it should have been done legally. But birds? Have a hard time believing a lot of birds were named just to glorify someone who killed black people.
Steve
Lets rename the month of July and August.
Julius and Augustus Caesar were both big slave-owners…