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For J. Drew Lanham, a conservation and cultural ornithologist at Clemson University and lifelong birder, the small brown bird officially called Bachman’s sparrow has long been the sparrow of the pine woods. He hopes that one day this latter name will become official. That change would replace the nod to a slave owner and vocal opponent of abolition and instead honor the sparrowThe very life of and the disappearing pine forests through which his song rings in the southeastern United States.
“I am a sparrow lover. I am a lover of little brown birds that are often ignored and grouped together. As a black man, that carries weight with me,” Lanham says.
That day is one step closer with an initiative by the American Ornithological Society (AOS), which oversees the official English names of birds in the Americas. On November 1, the association announced that progressively eliminate what are known as eponyms—names that honor specific people. Next year, the group will select eight to 10 birds to rename. In the coming years he will tackle the rest of the 70 to 80 species of American and Canadian birds currently named after people. In addition to Bachman’s sparrow, these bird species include the Steller’s jay, Anna’s hummingbird, and Cooper’s hawk.
Lanham says it’s the right decision. “It’s something like what we are taught as scientists: to be cautious but also look for simpler and truer solutions,” he says.
Colleagues and leaders in the field were the source of many of these bird names, while now the practice of naming species for people has gone far beyond the recognition of such individuals. Nowadays, celebrities are often the best choices for these types of nicknames; millipede named after Taylor Swifthe Spider named after Bernie Sanders. and the Wasp named after Brad Pitt..
But over time, with changes in cultural standards and new information coming to light, any The historical name can get complicated. and sour. In 2015, the United States government restored the name Denali to the highest mountain in North America, which for decades was called Mount McKinley, after the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley. Medicine also faces problematic eponyms, perhaps most notably the formerly official use of Nazi doctor Hans Asperger’s name for a neurodevelopmental disease that has since been conflated with autism spectrum disorder. The astronomical community debated Name change for NASA’s iconic new James Webb Space Telescope in the year before its launch because its namesake, 1960s NASA administrator James Webb, had previously been second in command at the State Department for a Anti-LGBTQ purge of federal employees known as Lavender Scare. However, NASA ultimately decided to keep the name.
One of the AOS’s predecessor organizations already changed a species name to the Long-tailed Duck to remove a racist slur in 2000. And in 2020, the AOS removed an eponym honoring a Confederate general and replaced it with the common name thick-billed Longspur species. Both options faced negative reactions from those who preferred to keep the established names.
Longspur’s decision had reversed one made just a year earlier that maintained the original name. That change was brought about in part by a group called Bird names for birds, which advocated for the AOS to remove all eponyms. The issue is not simply that certain eponyms honor dubious people, these advocates argued, but that such names also reflect an old view of science, dominated by white men. “Homonyms do nothing for birds,” says Judith Scarl, executive director and CEO of AOS. “Not only can some of these names be harmful, but there are better ways to name birds.” (Most North American birds named after people, she points out, nod to white men and bear their last name. The few that honor women use their first name.)
Scarl says he hopes name changes will help Welcome more people to the bird loving community. both reducing historical baggage and keeping the focus on the birds, not the humans.
The removal of eponyms might be felt more strongly by birders the further west they go, says Kenn Kaufman, a bird expert and author of several field guides, who was not involved in the decision. He says eponymous names became particularly common in the 19th century, when scientists had already established names for most species in the eastern parts of the country. Sparrows in particular will be hardest hit by the new decision, in part because many species look alike, making more descriptive names a challenge.
Kaufman, who has been birdwatching since he was a child, says he has seen mixed responses to the ad. “Many older people are opposed and I understand that,” he says. “I went from being totally against the idea to being totally for it.”
The decision to eliminate all eponyms is fairer (and simpler) than trying to evaluate each name separately, Kaufman says. He also calls the variety of people honored by eponyms “very uneven” and notes that “some of the people who have named birds didn’t even care about birds and never did anything for ornithology.”
Like Scarl, he sees the decision to eliminate eponyms entirely as an opportunity for positive discussions that focus on birds in all their glory. “They’re all cool birds,” Kaufman says of the species that currently bear human names. “There are great things to celebrate in all of them.”
And Lanham points out that North America now has almost three billion fewer birds than 50 years ago back. He hopes that by freeing the namesake birds from human baggage, scientists and birders alike will focus on conservation. “It’s not just about identifying birds. They know who they are,” Lanham says. Protecting birds and the planet we share requires more, he adds. “It’s important… that we not only identify the birds, but that we begin to identify with the birds,” Lanham says.
