List the bird names you cowards
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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This has some explanation. TL;DR get ready to be underwhelmed. This was based on some earlier efforts e.g. one in Sweden that changed bird names containing "neger" (negro), "kaffer" (a racial slur), or "zigenarfågel" (gypsy bird), but the stuff they've been able to find in North America is, well:
- Oldsquaw (a slur)
- Inca Dove (historically inaccurate, no overlap with Incas)
- McCown’s Longspur (McCown was a confederate)
Maybe there were more they didn't mention but my guess is that there's a reason they're writing the story while dancing around what names are actually being changed.
Aw man, I thought I was gonna find out there's birds with old person shit like what my grandma used to call Brazil nuts lol
I guess that's a good kind of disappointment to have
If anyone is wondering
N word toes
Not as messed up as Midwesterners calling stones sticking out of the ground risking dulling the mower blades n-word heads...
Couldn't believe that one when I heard it used by a racist country bumpkin dumbass.
I'm from the Midwest and I have never heard that. Goddamn that's a bad one lol
Maybe it's specifically the Ozarks?
Could be! Or maybe just a more rural thing. I grew up on the border of a major city and while it was generally frowned upon, I was no stranger to a lot of charged terms.
It (embarrassingly) took me until my 20s to realize the phrase I used to say something was poorly cobbled something together meant "rigged up like a black guy did it" - I assumed it was some ancient English word.
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Yep. Caused quite a stir at Christmas one year!
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Tits and boobies come to mind.
Sorry, what were we talking about? Birds?
I must say, I will appreciate more descriptive names when trying to identify certain birds.
I must say, if they rename the tit or the booby I shall hereby declare a state of war.
Many Latin and Greek names of birds are descriptive. For example what people often call the "tit" bird is actually Parus major, which you could roughly translate into "a bit bigger". And they are the biggest of the tit birds.
And another "tit" actually is called Lophophanes cristatus. Which roughly means "showing the comb (lophophanes) with hood (cristatus)".
I never knew that. That’s pretty cool.
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I couldn't find a single example of a racist bird name in that article. You'd think they would give one.
You can find a list on https://birdnamesforbirds.wordpress.com/historical-profiles/bios-by-region/ if you're interested.
Yet often it was his own stubborn and uncompromising nature that defined his life – his choices paint a picture of a man who was unable to heed the words of others. This undendinly antagonistic nature cost him friends, honours and ultimately put him into the dark role of colonialist.
He was "stubborn and uncompromising", which makes him "antagonistic", therefore a colonialist and racist. That's a pretty low bar. I don't think it makes sense to define racism in a way that makes all 19th century naturalists racist.
You could have also picked the dude that desecrated indigenous graves to do phrenology.
Edit: Jesus Christ you left out that this dude was a literal colonizer in New Zealand. He was an officer in a militia during the New Zealand Wars.
He was also a committee member of The New Zealand Company, which existed to systemically colonize New Zealand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_John_Swainson#New_Zealand_estate
So maybe it is slightly misleading to say he was labeled racist for being “antagonistic”??
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ok what bird said the n word
Twas a Southern Black Tit but it was talking to its homey.
Papa ooma mow mow
Can we rename all the lady parts next? Too many dead white men up in my junk.
https://medium.com/beingwell/10-female-specific-body-parts-named-after-men-f4ce59d16b91
You actually seem to have got it.
Here's a better source that suggests that they are interested in changing birds named after people, rather than birds named after slurs. It's linked in this article. I really hope that shames op. We need to be better.
Whether or not those people were bigots, they were probably white and male. Same as the anatomists that named the lady parts.
There's just a tradition of the first person to scientifically describe a "thing" getting to name it.
It's not great, but people that get to travel the world describing species and knowing enough to scientifically describe lady parts, etc are not poor people, at least until post war science. They still would have been mostly white and male, but they wouldn't have had to be as much independently wealthy.
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Good tactic to make everyone need to buy new editions of bird guide books.
But which bird will be renamed to X?
The titters
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