Hello all you writers and editors,
The Commonwealth Government Style Manual has a section dealing with the use of capitals. The Style Manual is (or was) the authority in Australia.
It says (in part) :- The modern habit of using capitals sparingly, except where they are needed to avoid even momentary understanding, is commendable.
It is the need to avoid misunderstanding between a general or common name and a specific or proper name that requires capitals………
It is also worth looking at Wickipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters, Section 10, 10.2 Common names where the recommendation is similar.
In the case of English names for birds, clearly we should be consistent, so capitals it is! You simply can’t write Little Falcon followed by willie wagtail.
Pedantly yours,
Graeme ===============================
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Well said Andrew. Burt May
True and my role that sort of started the diversion was to clarify whether birds are identified correctly, when the issue may be are birds being named as something that they are not, if wording conventions are unclear and thus a wrong impression given. Beyond that I suppose few of us have any information to add about the Night Parrot.
Philip
Andrew,
Probably because Capitals and common names are easier to see.
Carl Clifford
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Which is proper French. Common names for birds in French are only capitalised on the first word e.g. Barnacle Goose = Bernache nonnette & Eider Duck = Eider a duvet (sorry about the lack of diacritics, but the don’t appear on an iPad keyboard).
Carl Clifford
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One problem, Bob. To which language would the term ” common names” refer? To make it absolutely clear, one would have to use the term “English common names”.
Carl Clifford
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The argument put forward in this post has a fatal flaw: the assumption that there is a direct relationship between the volume of discussion, and the degree of importance attaching itself to a particular topic. A simple recourse to any news media outlet on any given day, whether it be “old media”, the purveyors of the “24-hour news cycle” or [gag] Twitter, should quickly disavow one of such a misapprehension.
In other words, just because some people are happy to crap on about grammatical pedantries, it doesn’t follow that they would be more interested in that than a living, breathing Night Parrot…
Well, I haven’t got much to say about Night Parrots other than I hope the plan works, because I, like just about everyone else, know nothing about them.
As for the hijacking, I’d say the perpetrators have done an unusually good job of changing the subject line.
I had considered pointing out that no one had said anything about the idea that of Night Parrot habitat being bulldozed, but decided it was probably silly to worry about what was probably just a few road verges in a sea of spinifex. There, now I’ve hijacked the capitalisation thread.
Peter Shute
Thanks for your response Dave but I think you may have missed my point.
The subject title of the discussion originally was “Capitalisation of bird common names” as created by Steve (insert family name here) and then became “Capitals and common names” as per Graeme Chapman. Thus the discussion is about capitalisation of “common names” and the very good reasons for doing that but the discussion is not about the choice of the name itself. As often happens in this oft resurrected discussion, the term “English names” came into the conversation as a replacement for “common names”. Thus my point was to question the correctness of referring, in this context, to common names as “English names” even by members of a society/country which has English as its first or national language. I was asking for a better or more appropriate label than “English name” (which I happen to think is totally inappropriate as it appears to have somewhat racial overtones). I am quite happy to use “common names” as that may be appropriate, even if sounding a little demeaning, but I wonder if there may be a better term. Since writing my original comment I have been prompted to consider “vernacular names” as a possible better choice.
A discussion on the correctness or otherwise of capitalisation of the “common names” used by birdwatchers should, in my mind at least, be an international one and therefore it is inappropriate to refer to “English names” or, indeed German, French, Swahili or any other national language names. Naturally, bird common names in different languages use different words and may have different meanings. What those words should be is not part of the discussion; it is whether those words which should or should not be capitalised that is the discussion.
Bob Inglis
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 12:25 PM Cc: Birding-Aus
I think most languages have their own names for at least the local birds – so English name is perfectly accurate in Aus (and UK, USA etc) whereas the common name for House Sparrow in French is “Moineau domestique” (see http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/house-sparrow-passer-domesticus). Interesting that the “domestique” (=House) is not capitalised….
In the name of pedanticism…………
There must be a better label than “English names”. Personally, I prefer “common names”.
Or should we only capitalise/capitalize the English versions of bird common names? (edited) ===============================
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Hi Sonja:
Yes, in larger cities like Tokyo and Osaka you will find a few birders who know English common names, particularly sort-after species or common species, or at least that will know the names of types of birds in English such as spoonbill, plover, merganser, falcon, bunting, etc., from which you can work out what species they are talking about. The good thing about being in a popular birding location is that there should be at least one person that either has some knowledge of English names or has a field guide with both Japanese and English common names. However on most of my trips to less visited locations, I have only rarely encountered someone familiar with English names. In every case, though, Japanese birders have gone out of their way to help even if language was a barrier! They are very accommodating to visiting birders.
Cheers,
John
Hi John,
I did find in two large parks in Tokyo though that some Japanese birders knew Mandarin Duck, and Baikal Teal in English and tried to help us find them through signs and escorting us or pointing on a map. Pictures or a photo in camera even were a big help!
Sonja
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Hi all:
As for Japanese birders, they normally use the Japanese common names….for birds occurring in Japan, these are descriptive names but often are similar to English common names when literally translated. For birds not occurring in Japan, they usually use as close a literal translation as they can convert the English common name (or scientific name) into. As for capitalization, as there is no capitalization per se in the Japanese language, it is a moot point. But most texts that write the Japanese common name in “romaji” (romanized script) have either only the first word in the name capitalized or there is no capitalization at all. Additionally, the words in the “romanji” names are usually joined by hyphens, so there is no second or third word to capitalize…
Interestingly, though, Japanese use a script called “katakana” for writing the proper names of animals and plants (many common species also have a corresponding Chinese character (“kanji”), though most Japanese don’t know these and cannot write or read them). So in a sense, this use of katakana could be considered to correspond to the use of capitalization in English.
Most Japanese birders have little or no knowledge of English common names, nor do they have much knowledge of the scientific names. This makes taking a checklist that contains translations of the English common name into the Japanese common name (and vice-versa!) on any Japanese birding trip a good idea if you want to get local knowledge on what has been seen where!
Cheers,
John
Hi all,
As far as German bird names go – I think all of them are capitalised and very often form only one word, e.g. Affenente (literally “Monkey Duck”) for Freckled Duck. This is the more “classic” approach in German but this has changed over time which means that for some species exactly the same rules apply for in both English and German. Lesser Yellowlegs (Kleiner Gelbschenkel) is a good example. I’m definitely all for following the IOC’s (capitalising) rules.
Dave and Bob, Many if not all German birders I know will use the English bird names when travelling overseas or coming across unfamiliar species – for a couple of reasons. First of all it’s much easier to communicate with other foreign birders. Also, most of the publishing is done in English, including site and field guides. It would be rather useless to study all of the names in German as well, unless you have a keen interest (like me).
Interested discussion anyway. Would love to hear what other fellow foreigners have to say.
Cheers, Falk
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I think most languages have their own names for at least the local birds – so English name is perfectly accurate in Aus (and UK, USA etc) whereas the common name for House Sparrow in French is “Moineau domestique” (see http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/house-sparrow-passer-domesticus). Interesting that the “domestique” (=House) is not capitalised….
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In the name of pedanticism…………
There must be a better label than “English names”. Personally, I prefer “common names”.
Or should we only capitalise/capitalize the English versions of bird common names?
It would seem that some non-English speaking (as a ‘first’ language) birdwatchers also capitalise bird common names. For example my copy of “Robert’s Birds of Southern Africa” lists common names in a number of languages and they all capitalise the names. That is, to maintain the pedantic theme, except for the Zulu names which all start with one, two or three lowercase letters immediately followed by what looks like the actual name headed by an uppercase letter. I don’t speak or understand “Zulu” (I barely understand English these days and that is certainly often the case when it is written) so I can’t comment on that form of spelling and format. Of course, that version of that field guide was published in 1984, before “texting” and “SMS” so it also has punctuation and the text uses complete words.
Do, for example, German, Japanese, Spanish (but to name a few) birdwatchers refer to “English names in their everyday birding conversations?
Just to make it clear, I always capitalise (but rarely capitalize) bird Common Names.
Bob Inglis Sandstone Point Qld Australia ===============================
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Dear All,
We have covered this topic in detail on Birding-aus in the past. As a reminder of past discussions, the International Ornithologists’ Committee (IOC) has the following spelling rules:
SPELLING RULES
The construction and spelling of English names of birds have a significant history, including a seminal paper by Kenneth Parkes (1978, Auk 95:324-326), thoughtful treatments in the authoritative publications of the RAOU, AOU, and BOU as well as in many major field guides and handbooks. We strived to unify, clarify, codify, and extend these building blocks.
Briefly, the rules that we adopted are as follows:
1. Official English names of birds are capitalized, as is the current practice in ornithology (e.g., Yellow-throated Warbler).
2. Patronyms are used in the possessive case (e.g., Smith’s, Ross’s).
3. Names on this list do not include diacritical marks.
4. There are compromises between British and American spellings in this list.
5. Those who adopt the list should spell and add pronunciation marks as preferred.
6. Geographical words in a name may be in noun or adjective form but must be consistent for that location (e.g., Canada , not Canadian).
7. Compound words conform to a series of rules that consistently address relationships between the two words and readability.
8. Use of hyphens in compound group names to indicate relationships among species is minimized, contrary to Parkes (1978).
9. Hyphens are used in compound names only to connect two names that are birds or bird families (e.g., Eagle-Owl, Flycatcher-shrike) or when the name would be otherwise difficult to read (e.g., Silky-flycatcher, White-eye).
Kind regards, Stephen
Stephen Ambrose Ryde NSW
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Great pedanting (if there is such a word). Now if only we could get this generally accepted……
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