Subject: Re: English names
Date: Apr 27 11:35:12 1995
From: Stuart MacKay - stuart.mackay at mccaw.com


Don, I'm so high in the Goshute Mountains, Baccus wrote:


> How about the Brits? If the Brit ornithological usage is to
> NOT capitalize (I don't know - I'm curious here), we could
> find ourselves in the interesting situation of discussing
> related birds, one NA and one Brit, in differing case if we
> wish to be Ornithologically Correct.

Bird names, certainly within my experience, are capitalized. The second word
in hyphenated pairs isn't. Same as it is/could be/should be/won't be (delete
as (in)appropriate, over here.


> Of course, if the ornithological standard is consistent
> throughout the world then no such conflicts occur (in
> practice, of course, it means adopting the standard in use in
> the country where one's paper is published).

Latin names work wonders over the Globe, everybody knows them, well nerdy
science types at least :-) and even if the species is not familiar then the
genera at least gives a clue - sometimes !!!

In Europe there are at least two or three "regional/national" names for each
species, multiply this up by the number of countries and the problems of
communication are huge. Latin names, although at first glance obscure, do a
really good job.

I really intrigued by all this desire/craving for standardisation in bird
names. Particularly in the US, a nation of individuals, people seem to spend
an inordinate amount of time trying to be all alike ;->

How about northwest birders starting to use the local Salish, Makah names for
birds. Definitely more interesting, especially when something really rare
comes along and you could drive people wild all across the country by only
referring to it by the local name - or some derivative.


Stuart MacKay