Common Names

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