Re: [cobirds] Kenn Kaufman's Research

And I would answer in rebuttal that anyone wanting to be fully informed on this topic should read "Policing the scientific lexicon: The new colonialism?" by Rohan Pethiyagoda (Sri Lanka) which can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/5u45569r

A partial quote: "Here, writing from the perspective of a scientist who has spent most of his career working in Sri Lanka, a biodiverse developing country, I contend that undoing the perceived harm that inappropriate names and terms can cause people who belong to oppressed communities in the developed world (the West) may harm the greater part of the global scientific community whose native language is not English.

Cheng et al. (2023) seek to redress social problems in the English-speaking world (henceforth, the Anglosphere) and especially North America, by imposing terminological and nomenclatural reforms also on the rest of the world. These reforms would carry the unintended consequence of compelling taxonomists in biodiverse countries—especially developing countries—to direct their attention away from the enormous task of describing Earth's vanishing biodiversity in order to deal with the challenge of revising biological nomenclature and terminology to address issues that have little meaning outside the Anglosphere—particularly the US context. I contend that the US would do better to solve its social and political problems rather than renaming them, and especially, rather than exporting them."

Please read the entire paper. Very Illuminating.

R.

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Rachel Kolokoff Hopper

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rkhphotography.net
hopko@comcast.net
Ft. Collins, CO

On Dec 7, 2023, at 9:01 AM, Diana Beatty <otowi33.33@gmail.com> wrote:



Jared Del Rosso published a good addition to this discussion on The Conversation:  — https://theconversation.com/why-dozens-of-north-american-bird-species-are-getting-new-names-every-name-tells-a-story-217886

An interesting point he made:  "all eponymous names imply human ownership over birds....Science has greatly expanded human understanding of birds in recent decades. We now recognize that birds are intelligent, with rich emotional lives. Radar, lightweight transmitters and satellite telemetry have helped scientists map the transcontinental migrations that many bird species make each year.

Trading eponymous names, which treat birds as passive objects, for richer descriptive names reflects this sea change in our understanding of avian lives."

Diana Beatty

El Paso County

On Mon, Dec 4, 2023 at 8:02 AM Greg Osland <gregosland1@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks to Don Jones for sharing a link from Kenn Kaufman that summarizes some of Kenn's recent research on eponymous names and the history of ornithology. The report provides objective historical facts that most birders, like me, never realized. Each of us can draw our own conclusions from his findings about the historical value of eponymous names and whether they should be retained for historical reasons.  Here is one of his findings:

From the 1820s to the early 1840s in North America, John James Audubon was handing out eponyms like candy. At first he was trying to court favor with British naturalists (like Bewick, Henslow, or Swainson) or with wealthy individuals who might support his work. Later he used names to honor various friends and colleagues (like Harris, Sprague, or Bell). 

http://www.kaufmanfieldguides.com/kenn-on-the-issues/eponymous-bird-names-and-the-history-of-ornithology?fbclid=IwAR32lesbSDgzt0MiBEG4bGBoBBnWEPPcisGmEW9z-aWljHFrMbOi08lwxaU

Greg Osland

Larimer County

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