Phew! What a range of opinion. Personally I am in the "leave it be" group but
when do you draw the line? Names have been changing forever.
I'm thinking all of us are being self-centred and promoting our particular view
and one argument is as good as another.
Think outside the box. Think next generation. Let's leave them with names that
are unique, descriptive and attractive. BUT THEY DON'T HAVE TO RELATE TO SOME
SORT OF INTERNATIONAL STANDARD. So there's an authority taking it on themselves
to alter names to fit their rules. So long as our names are unique and chosen
by us, just tell the "authorities" to get stuffed. It's COMMON names we are
talking about for goodness sakes, used, I would suggest, 99.9% in Australia.
Any international references would use the latin.
How could Willie Wagtail confuse anybody for goodness sake! How could you tell
20,000,000 Australians you've decided to change the name of their favourite
bird? And can anybody honestly say any of the mooted alternatives are better?
Same with "Magpie" Why shouldn't our "Maggies" be taxonomicaly unrelated to
"Magpies" elsewhere. Touring USA I had no problem understanding that. After
hosting many overseas visitors over the years I've not found any of them to be
confused by the concept that our "robins" are not the same as theirs.
The current alternative to "Honeyeater is neither descriptive nor attractive.
Get the science nerds on splitting, lumping and assigning Latin names and
birdwatchers on assigning common names for the common person that will roll off
the tongue and let newcomers see a link between the bird and the name. (not to
mention non-birdos) If you want to make changes, nuke "Gerygone". There's many
others - If you have to explain a name it should be shot down.
To do that, all of us, in our own particular cliques, have to give up our
favourites. I'm happy to surrender "Jabiru" and "Thick-Knee", but let's have
something attractive and descriptive. "Stone-Curlew"? uh uh. Black-necked Stork
when it's head is Blue (or satin) just shows up the ignorance of those who have
decided our names in the past.
Maris Lauva
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