Bird Names for Birds is a campaign to change the common names of American birds named after people, and to redress the recognition in ornithology of figures with racist or colonial pasts. Launched in June 2020 by ornithologists Jordan E. Rutter and Gabriel Foley with a public petition, in the midst of the George Floyd protests and in the aftermath of an incident in Central Park that paved the way to Black Birders Week,[1] the movement emerged after several years of social activism by multiple American ornithologists and birders, many of whom are not affiliated with Bird Names for Birds but remain devoted to the cause. The inaugural petition, dated June 22, 2020, and co-signed by 182 individuals, urged the American Ornithological Society (AOS) to "acknowledge the issue of eponymous and honorific common names, to outline a plan to change harmful common names, and to prioritize the implementation of this plan".[2] In 2023, the AOS formally announced that it would change all English-language bird names that are named directly after people.[3][4][1]
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.[5] Proposals for name changes can be submitted to the North American Classification and Nomenclature Committee (NACC) of the AOS.[6] The Bird Names for Birds website 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.[7] 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.[8]
In 2018, Robert Driver, an American ornithologist and graduate student at East Carolina University, filed a proposal to the NACC, requesting that they change the English common name of McCown's longspur, which was named after Confederate general John Porter McCown. The proposal was published by the NACC on September 18, 2018.[9] The proposal generated considerable attention.[10] On January 19, 2019, ornithologist Matthew Halley wrote in reaction to the McCown renaming debate: "If one common name is changed for ethical reasons, then no honorific should be left standing." Halley went on to list prominent naturalists such as John James Audubon, John Kirk Townsend, Charles Bendire and William Bartram who engaged in behavior such as body snatching and slavery, yet birds named by or after these men were not then controversial. Names now considered "benevolent" might be re-evaluated in the future, Halley said, so he came down on the side of renaming all birds named after humans.[11] On June 23, 2019, an anonymous "guest" author on the popular birding blog "10,000 Birds" advocated for the "[Renaming of] All Birds Named For White People".[12] This blog was published one day before the 137th meeting of the AOS in Anchorage, AK, which occurred on 24–28 June 2019.[13]
In November 2019, the McCown's renaming proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by NACC with a vote count of 1 Yes, 7 No, and 1 Abstain.[14] Most members expressed general concern about the slippery slope nature of the proposal and the need to maintain stability in naming conventions.[11][14][15]
In 2020, following weeks of widespread "Black Lives Matter" protests following the murder 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. The Central Park birdwatching incident on May 25, 2020, led to the founding of Black Birders Week (May 31-June 5, 2020). On June 16, 2020, Halley published another blog detailing "The (literal) skeletons in the closet of American Ornithology",[16] drawing a link between Audubon's and Townsend's body snatching activities, in support of Samuel Morton's ranking of human races by cranial "capacity", to the claims of Alexander Stephens in the Cornerstone Speech, that the white supremacist ideology of the Confederacy was backed by science. In the following months, there was increased media attention devoted to eponymous bird names, particularly those honoring historical figures with links to slavery.[17] The National Audubon Society publicly acknowledged that John James Audubon bought and sold slaves in a blog post by historian Gregory Nobles on July 31, 2020.[18]
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 (BNFB) 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.[19] The co-founders of the initiative argued 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."[20] In addition to 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.[21]
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.[22]
On November 1, 2023, the AOS announced that it would change all English-language bird names that are named directly after people.[23]
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.[24] 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,[25] following a unanimous vote.[22] 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.[26]
The topic has been covered by mainstream media outlets in the United States,[27] and has been mocked by some conservative figures including Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who tweeted on 16 June 2021, "Why does WaPo think birds are racist?"[28]
In October 2023, the AOS announced that it was set to rename all bird species associated with individuals, aiming to eliminate names linked to figures with racist pasts. Aiming for more descriptive names based on habitat or physical features, the renaming process would involve public input, addressing concerns about isolation, and demeaning reminders of oppression in bird names. Over 100 avian species across the Americas would undergo this change, with the move eliciting mixed reactions within the birding community.[29]
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[30] and European Neurology[31] 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,[32] while others have argued that such eponyms should be retained as "a means of conveying immortal dishonor."[33]
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 10 potentially offensive names it had identified.[34]
The 2020 protests against racism further encouraged academic institutions and scholarly societies to remove potentially offensive references from journal names or academic prizes.[35] 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.[36]
Related Research Articles
John James Audubon was a French-American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is the eponym of the National Audubon Society, and his name adorns a large number of towns, neighborhoods, and streets across the United States. Dozens of scientific names first published by Audubon are still in use by the scientific community.
Alexander Wilson was a Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, naturalist, and illustrator. Identified by George Ord as the "Father of American Ornithology", Wilson is regarded as the greatest American ornithologist before Audubon.
The National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world. There are completely independent Audubon Societies in the United States, which were founded several years earlier such as the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Indiana Audubon Society, and Connecticut Audubon Society. The societies are named for 19th century naturalist John James Audubon.
The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its members are primarily professional ornithologists, although membership is open to anyone with an interest in birds. The society publishes the two scholarly journals, Ornithology and Ornithological Applications as well as the AOS Checklist of North American Birds. The American Ornithological Society claims the authority to establish standardized English bird names throughout North and South Americas.
The chestnut-collared longspur is a species of bird in the family Calcariidae. Like the other longspurs, it is a small ground-feeding bird that primarily eats seeds. It breeds in prairie habitats in Canada and the northern United States and winters to the south in the United States and Mexico.
The thick-billed longspur, formerly known as McCown's longspur, is a small ground-feeding bird in the family Calcariidae, which also contains the other longspurs and snow buntings. It is found in North America and is the only species in the genus Rhynchophanes.
Smith's longspur is a bird from the family Calcariidae, which also contains the other species of longspurs. A bird of open habitats, it breeds in northern Canada and Alaska, and winters in the southern United States. Primarily a ground-feeding seed-eater, it supplements its diet with insects in the summer.
John Kirk Townsend was an American naturalist, ornithologist and collector.
The Scott's oriole is a medium-sized icterid.
John Porter McCown was a career officer in the United States Army, fighting in the Mexican–American War and in the Seminole Wars. He also served as a general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
Frank Bennington Gill is an American ornithologist with worldwide research interests and birding experience. He is perhaps best known as the author of the textbook Ornithology, the leading textbook in the field.
The Middle American screech owl, also known as the Guatemalan screech owl, is a species of owl in the family Strigidae. It is found from northern Mexico to western Panama.
The ashy-faced owl is a species of bird in the barn-owl family Tytonidae. It is found on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, on Dominica, and on several other islands of the Lesser Antilles.
The paint-billed crake is a species of bird in the subfamily Rallinae of the rail, crake, and coot family Rallidae. It is found in Costa Rica, Panama, every mainland South American country except Chile and Uruguay, and the Galápagos Islands.
The AOS Checklist of North American Birds is a checklist of the bird species found in North and Middle America which is now maintained by the American Ornithological Society (AOS). The checklist was originally published by the AOS's predecessor, the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). The Union merged with the Cooper Ornithological Society in 2016 to form the American Ornithological Society. The checklist was first published in 1886; the seventh edition of the checklist was published in 1998 and is now updated every year by an open-access article published in the Ibis. Seven editions and 54 supplements have been published in the last 127 years. According to Joel Asaph Allen, the Codes of Nomenclature set out in the first edition of the Checklist "later became the basis of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, framed on essentially the same lines and departing from it in no essential respect, except in point of brevity, through omission of adequate illustrations of the rules, and thereby rendering necessary the issuance of official 'Opinions' to clear up obscure points."
McCown is a Goidelic surname with several possible etymological origins.
Calcariidae is a small family of passerine birds. It includes longspurs and snow buntings. There are six species in three genera worldwide, found mainly in North America and Eurasia. They are migratory and can live in a variety of habitats including grasslands, prairies, tundra, mountains, and beaches.
Kathy Martin is a Canadian ornithologist who is an expert on arctic and alpine grouse and ptarmigan, and on tree cavity-nesting vertebrates. She is a professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia and was a senior research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The short-billed gull is a medium-sized species of gull that breeds in northwestern North America. In North America, it was previously known as the mew gull, when it was considered conspecific with the palearctic common gull. Most authorities, including the American Ornithological Society in 2021, have split the two populations as distinct species.
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