Taxonomy & Bird Names

I am something of a fanatic when it comes to bird names, particularly eponyms, and the history behind both the naming and taxonomy. In one sense taxonomy is just a construct to help us understand the relationships between orders, families and species. Speciation is really a spectrum… races (subspecies) are on their way to becoming new species, and species are on their way to becoming new families.

This section includes both the science behind naming (taxonomy) and sites helping with common names or translation of names into other languages. There are several explanations of taxonomy both in terms of how birds are named and the phylogenetic tree of families and species etc. Names old and new, common and scientific, as well as some hints at the attempt to unify English common names across the world.

Birders should try their best to familiarise themselves with the scientific (not Latin as scientific names are often mixtures of Latin and Greek and even other languages entirely) names of familiar birds because it enables us to talk across the nations. The word Paradae means something on both sides of the English Channel (La Manche) and Atlantic but not all of us know what a Black-capped Chickadee or a Blue Tit is. You don’t even have to set out to learn the names just look at them every time you check your list or consult the field-guide and you will surprise yourself at how many scientific names you already know.

There has been a great deal said about eponyms in the last year or two, (written in early 2026) particularly in the United States. What is not immediately obvious is that a great many birds are named after people who were less than savoury in their conduct or beliefs. It’s obvious when you think about it, that naming anything tends to be the prerogative of those with education and the financial backing to pursue anything other than merely staying fed and housed. Inevitably, therefore, a lot of people who became the leading ornithologists or zoologists of the day came from those countries who were at the same time plundering the wealth of the rest of the world. For a time, this meant that Europeans, and particularly the British, were travelling the world and putting names to what they discovered.

At different times, this has been true of the Japanese, the Americans, and latterly the Chinese. Clearly that is not a problem per se. However, many of these people treated the locals as if they were less than human and some were extreme in their treatment of native peoples. It’s no wonder then that there is a movement to strike these names from the record. My feeling on this is that this is going overboard because the truth is most people don’t remember who’s who anyway. (Among people after whom birds have been named are a great many racists, homophobes and sexists not to say liars, thieves, cheats, murderers and even at least one paedophile!) most, but not all, from the Victorian period or other colonial times. Raking it up again obviously tends to be just as problematic as letting it lie.

Moreover, there is a scientific base upon which names are named. And once you start trying to delete and airbrush history, you create other problems down the line. It has to be said that this is much less the case when it comes to common names. And it seems to me that removing those common names from the record, particularly as they’re not universal anyway, is not such a bad idea.

Unfortunately, one aspect of this is that someone regarded as a hero in one place is regarded as a murdering racist in another. We also have to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Great artists, mathematicians, scientists, leaders are not always nice people. Do we deny their achievements? I think not. What one needs to do is recognise their feet of clay and publicly denounce that, whilst at the same time appreciating what they achieved. Take Audubon as an example. There is no doubt that he was both a great artist and a great observer of nature. The criticisms levelled at him at the time have been often shown to be quite unfair and that his observations were actually better than his contemporaries. Nevertheless, he was not always a nice guy to know and we know that he was a slave owner. Not a good man, but nevertheless a good scientist and artist. I leave the debate for you to mull over for yourselves.

A very welcome recent development is that after much debate there is now a unified list of bird species across the world. Cooperation between different authorities including the International Ornithological Congress has led to a unified list (all bird family lists on Fatbirder follow this new list). That is not to say that all the names are forever written in stone and it is not without issues.

There are examples of confusion. For example, the same family of birds, known as Jaegers in the US and Skuas elsewhere end up on the list unresolved – some being called Skuas and others Jaegers. Some divers are called divers, others loons, and I doubt the common names will be completely universal for a long time to come. Nevertheless, the unified list whereby the doubtful areas of taxonomy are at least temporarily resolved is a great step forward.

The list does, as an aside, indicate those areas where further research into the true status of species needs to be carried out. The process has already led to lumps and splits being agreed, which is no bad thing. And the fact that some areas need more sophisticated research, such as mitochondrial DNA studies, is now universally acknowledged. Again, that is no bad thing.

The illustration I’ve used was written a decade or more ago and as it covers many thousands of species and people there will be errors. I’ve continually revised it in the hope we can issue another, corrected edition. I’ve seen many of my ‘errors’ pointed out on the net justifiably. Some, such comments have, actually been incorrect themselves… and others examples of general ignorance.