Someone sent a posting earlier in the year referencing a website that had
a bird name quiz. The aim of the quiz was to guess whether an indigenous
south american name was a bird name or not.
Without even knowing the lanaguage or the birdlife of south america, most
people could guess which was a bird name, because most of the bird names
intimated the call of the bird.
For example, if i asked you which of the following was a bird name, a
hoohoo or a grunup. Most people would guess hoohoo, and probably even
guess it was the name of an owl, because of the noise associated with
owls.
Big long names that dont intimate the call of the bird seem to loose their
social appeal..(black-faced cuckoo-shrike is the ultimate example, being a
very common bird australia-wide, yet only a very small percentage of the
population know its name). On the other end of the spectrum, one of the
most socially accepted birds in australia is the Kookaburra that says its
own name every morning!
So rather than a name suggesting a relationship to the food a species eats
(damn..i just saw a honeyeater eating a spider!!!), or a description of
its markings (wow..i just saw a lueciistic black honeyeater eating a
spider!), maybe a description of the call of the bird is the best
candidate for a name change???
L&L Knight <>
Sent by:
26/11/2009 01:43 PM
To
Peter Shute <>
cc
"Birding-aus \(E-mail\)" <>
Subject
Re: [Birding-Aus] Identifying bird groups in need of a name changeim
Yes, it is as inappropriate as stone curlew, which is used to refer to
birds that are neither curlews nor have strong affinities with stones.
Why ram the names of two groups of English species together to name an
unrelated group in Australia? Someone had the whit to come up with
new names like Whipbird, Wedgebill, and Honeyeater. If you want a
longer name, then of course you can use names like Spider-hunter.
Regards, Laurie.
On 26/11/2009, at 12:24 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
> Is a cuckoo-shrike inappropriately named? It's neither a cuckoo nor
> a shrike, but doesn't the addition of the hyphen create a new name
> that can be applied to a bird that's neither of those?
>
> It might be a mouthful, but compare it to the German practice of
> creating new words just by joining words together, e.g.
> Einhandmotorkettensägenführerlehrgangsteilnahmebestätigung.
> (Someone might be having me on, but I'm led to believe that means
> chainsaw operator's certificate - One-man-motor-chain-saw-operator's-
> instruction-course-participating-certificate).
>
> Peter Shute
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> ] On Behalf Of L&L Knight
> Sent: Thursday, 26 November 2009 12:46 PM
> To: Birding-aus (E-mail)
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Identifying bird groups in need of a name
> change
>
> Jeff is right, it is time to stop waffling and start a systematic
> approach to the issue of dodgy bird names.
>
> I would say that the first step is to list bird groups that are
> inappropriately named, such as robins, cuckoo-shrikes and magpies.
>
> Regards, Laurie.
>
> On 26/11/2009, at 11:29 AM, Jeff Davies wrote:
>
>> Surely this thread has run its course by now.
>> I honestly don't believe that there will be an overwhelming show of
>> hands to start calling a Cuckoo-shrike a Cush, enough already.
>>
>> Cheers Jeff.
>>
>
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