Friday 8 December 2023

Re: [cobirds] Kenn Kaufman's Research

Dear CoBirders:

Let's remember the list's focus on topics pertinent to Colorado birding and Colorado birds. I feel like this discussion has ranged away from that.

Anyone have any birds to report? :-)

Thank you,

David Suddjian
CoBirds list moderator

On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 1:48 PM Evan Wilder <evan.d.burgess@gmail.com> wrote:
I must be missing something here. How would it be imposing colonialism on other countries by changing the names to descriptive terms that can actually be translated? While "Townsend's Warbler" means next to nothing to English speakers, "Chipe de Townsend" must mean even less to Spanish speakers. In contrast, "Black-Throated Green Warbler" translating to "Chipe Dorso Verde" provides a related meaning while being descriptive in its own way. It seems to me that there is more "western baggage" attached to a Eurocentric eponymous name than to the renaming of it.

I'm getting these particular translations from my friend Eddy, a birding guide in the Yucatán, who takes care to translate all the bird names in his posts. If you look at his posts (eddy_birding_tours on Instagram), the Spanish names he prefers to use often alter the English meaning or eponymous name in order to be more descriptive in Spanish. 

That said, I appreciate Mr. Pethiyagoda's focus on critical taxonomic work and his pushback against burdening "researchers from former colonies" with the work of a renaming project that stems from an American effort. His article is an important perspective in all of this, especially the fact that renaming eponymous bird names is unequivocally not the most important factor in inclusivity or conservation. If the American scientific community holds this renaming effort up as the paragon of progressive ideals in ornithology, we need to reevaluate our priorities.

- Evan

On Dec 8, 2023, at 1:15 PM, Diana Beatty <otowi33.33@gmail.com> wrote:


The AOU states on their website that they are focusing only on bird names in the U.S. and Canada right now, and do not have a plan to change Latin American bird names without the involvement of Latin American ornithologists and organizations.

Diana Beatty
El Paso County

On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 1:07 PM Rachel Hopper <hopkohome8@gmail.com> wrote:

So we change the name of Swainson's Warbler. 


Wintering Swainson's Warblers are in the Caribbean and southern Mexico and also central Jamaica.


How are we not imposing our values on other countries where these birds are all addressed by their ENGLISH common names?


And to quote Jon Dunn: "The AOS will do outreach to individuals and organizations in Latin America to see how they feel about the changing of the English names and how to go about it. What happens if they say "no thank you?" Many of those species that are of rare to accidental occurrence have well-established English names. What right do we have to change those names? Forcing new English names seems like more examples of "American Imperialism," the very thing that the movement to replace English names decries against ("colonialism")."


Swainson's Warbler does not "belong" to us here in the U.S. nor does it "belong" to the AOS. What right does any governing body in the U.S. have to change the name of a bird that spends three-quarters of its life in mostly non-English speaking countries? How is this not imposing our "western baggage" on other parts of the world?


The whole point of the article is the very idea that we can force this change on other countries smacks of the new colonialism.


Rachel Kolokoff Hopper

--------------------------------- 


On Dec 8, 2023, at 11:29 AM, Diana Beatty <otowi33.33@gmail.com> wrote:

It is an interesting article.  It does not address the AOU decision per se, but instead is addressing some published works of scientists around the interest of species name revisions, which could include lots of different ideas about how and where those are happening, for what reasons, and whether they involve common names or also scientific. 

The geographic range of AOU is limited and the scope of discussion is not controlling how other organizations and parts of the world adopt or alter naming conventions. Further, the scope of renaming by AOU does not currently involve scientific names but only common. Bird name changes happen regularly, and the article does say there is a "duty to remove obviously hurtful and discriminatory words from the scientific lexicon".

The logic of the AOU approach is that we do waste our time if we spend it all arguing over what exactly qualifies and what doesn't, and it is one of the points of the article that their method seems to attempt to address by adopting a simple rule in its own practice.

 I prefer to discuss what is actually being done vs. the hypotheticals of a larger or more encompassing act that is beyond the will, scope, or intent of an AOU decision.  I agree with the author that the "West" should not be imposing its baggage all over the world, but I don't think that what the article is opposing is necessarily inclusive of the AOU decision due to its much more limited range and scope and reasoned approach.

Diana Beatty
El Paso County

On Thu, Dec 7, 2023 at 9:26 AM Rachel Kolokoff Hopper <hopkohome8@gmail.com> wrote:
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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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). 


Greg Osland
Larimer County


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