birding-aus

names

To: 'Denise Goodfellow' <>
Subject: names
From: Tony Russell <>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2017 22:29:19 +0000
Excellent, give them a wave for me.

Tony.



From: Denise Goodfellow 
Sent: 24 January 2017 15:25
To: Tony Russell
Cc: michael hunter; birding-aus
Subject: names



I think my Kunwinjku relatives will be honoured to know that a man of your
calibre prefers Djagana!



Denise





On 24 Jan 2017, at 12:29 pm, Tony Russell <> wrote:





Well I reckon we should call it DJAGANA then.  Surely no other bird in the
world has that name. I'm changing my birdlist now.

-----Original Message-----
From: Birding-Aus  On Behalf Of
Denise Goodfellow
Sent: 24 January 2017 02:05
To: michael hunter
Cc: birding-aus
Subject: names

When I asked the question on Facebook most replied that they called the bird
'Jabiru' even though some were aware of the official name.  A Bininj
grandson in Gunbalanya wrote "Yeah at top end area we called it jabiru big
name but aboriginal name its DJAGANA".  And he's right, as far as Kunwinjku
and related peoples are concerned - in my experience they all use 'Jabiru',
as do most of the people I guided over thirty years.

Much of Australia's avifauna (and other fauna) is known by European names,
although there is no close taxonomic association. And 'Bandicoot'  is the
common name of a genus of Asian rodents.  I don't see anyone calling for
these names to be changed.

Denise Lawungkurr  Goodfellow
PO Box 71
Darwin River, NT, Australia 0841
043 8650 835








On 23 Jan 2017, at 3:56 pm, michael hunter <> wrote:





 Once again a few academics, mostly not Australian, if not Un-Australian,

are foisting otherworldly names onto us Aussie birders.




Common names , NOT ENGLISH names, for Australian birds are names commonly

used by about 99% of Australian birdwatchers for our birds. It is appalling
that colourless English names like Black-necked Stork have been inflicted on
us by a few pseudo-academics who are presumably incapable of memorising
Scientific names.  Jabiru may be the common name of a South American Stork,
but changing the official "common" name for any birdwatcher witless enough
to confuse the two in the field was an amazing arrogance. One justification
was that people reading birdguides will be confused in not justified.




 These people are meddling with our Australian common names, which are ,

or were, spontaneous non-scientific vernacular.



 Among many examples, "Jabiru" and "Torres Straits Pigeon" had romantic

(in the broad sense folks) connotations lost in the bland generics we are
told to use instead. As a youth my first sighting of the legendary Jabiru
was very exciting, and stimulated a life-long interest in Birding.  Seeing a
Black-necked Stork would not have.




"Willy Fantail"   They must be joking.

       Resist.

              Michael

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