Re: Common Names

Dear Stuart,

This subject will not be exhausted in our life time.

Jabiru is in use in South America for an inferior stork to ours. I think
the name is Portuguese - as with Emu. Even so, the name should have been
Australian Jabiru (as in Australian Magpie) to have got round the trite
arguments about pre-emption overseas promulgated by the RAOU compilers in
the 70s. Basically, what we have seen is the development of
Australian-received names (in the formal,  linguistic sense) for birds,
such as Black-necked Stork, while the plebs, most of the Australian
population (the underclass in the bird sense) use slang, such as the
informality, Jabiru.

What's wrong with Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo its got rhythm and metre.
That's only two more syllables than kookaburra, which is nothing to laugh
at.


Glen Ingram
Brisbane, Australia