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It’s not erasing scientists or history. The article notes that some birds are just named after benefactors or friends or whatever the namer-of-the-bird at the t

It’s not erasing scientists or history. The article notes that some birds are just named after benefactors or friends or whatever the namer-of-the-bird at the time was. Things that are inherently untreated to the bird species itself. The move isn’t about rejecting our white supremacist history - it’s about giving things names that are informative and meaningful with regard to the bird itself. The article explains this pretty well with several examples. The white supremacy angle comes from the consideration that a bird that was known very well across indigenous generations as one name was decidedly named something like “John Smith’s Warbler” because John Smith “discovered” the bird and that’s what has been codefied. Meanwhile native knowledge of the same species was deliberately wiped from history by way of forced assimilation and genocide. The white supremacy bit being that whatever the predominately white folks learned or knew of a species superseded what the people who’d lived there for generations had known about the species.

allturtles 3y ago
> The move isn’t about rejecting our white supremacist history That's clearly the motivation. Per the article: "The movement really began in 2020, when the group Bird Names for Birds successfully petitioned the AOS to change the name of a species of grassland bird then named after Confederate Maj. Gen. John P. McCown to the inoffensive (and more descriptive) Thick-billed Longspur." > it’s about giving things names that are informative and meaningful with regard to the bird itself. This is an after-the-fact rationalization to make the change seem more scientific. But names in general aren't mnemonics, they are just... names. Just consider the base names of most birds: duck, heron, eagle, hawk. The name itself tells you nothing about the bird, they are just sounds attached to a particular shape of bird (maybe they have some historical etymological meanings, but if so, they are not generally known). Yet people have no trouble remembering what a duck is. They don't need to call it a wide-beaked water bird. This can even apply to names that are supposed to be descriptive, e.g. I had no idea what "pileated" meant until recently when I looked it up, but I've known what a pileated woodpecker is since I was a kid. The same, of course, applies to all sorts of parts of nature: e.g. it's Mars, not "red planet", grass, not "bendy skinny plant", etc. (p.s. when are they coming for the planet names? We've claimed entire other worlds for the Roman empire!)
jevoten 3y ago
> a bird that was known very well across indigenous generations as one name was decidedly named something like “John Smith’s Warbler” In English. Its English name became "John Smith's Warbler". Its Cherokee or Apache name was and is unchanged. This is a symptom of a common Anglosphere/American perspective - that US culture and the English language belongs to and must somehow reflect the peoples of the world, and not just the English and their colonies.
subjectsigma 3y ago
It’s funny how it’s never about politics, only about good ideas. The names “blacklist” and “whitelist” were perfectly fine to describe the completely innocuous things they are, and everyone had no problem understanding them for hundreds of years. All of the sudden they’re “unclear” and “not very descriptive”, and we need to pick names that are “informative and meaningful”. Weird, the timing of that determination. I would respect the people advocating for this stuff a lot more if they weren’t blatantly using doublespeak to my face

allturtles 3y ago

> The move isn’t about rejecting our white supremacist history That's clearly the motivation. Per the article: "The movement really began in 2020, when the group Bird Names for Birds successfully petitioned the AOS to change the name of a species of grassland bird then named after Confederate Maj. Gen. John P. McCown to the inoffensive (and more descriptive) Thick-billed Longspur." > it’s about giving things names that are informative and meaningful with regard to the bird itself. This is an after-the-fact rationalization to make the change seem more scientific. But names in general aren't mnemonics, they are just... names. Just consider the base names of most birds: duck, heron, eagle, hawk. The name itself tells you nothing about the bird, they are just sounds attached to a particular shape of bird (maybe they have some historical etymological meanings, but if so, they are not generally known). Yet people have no trouble remembering what a duck is. They don't need to call it a wide-beaked water bird. This can even apply to names that are supposed to be descriptive, e.g. I had no idea what "pileated" meant until recently when I looked it up, but I've known what a pileated woodpecker is since I was a kid. The same, of course, applies to all sorts of parts of nature: e.g. it's Mars, not "red planet", grass, not "bendy skinny plant", etc. (p.s. when are they coming for the planet names? We've claimed entire other worlds for the Roman empire!)

jevoten 3y ago

> a bird that was known very well across indigenous generations as one name was decidedly named something like “John Smith’s Warbler” In English. Its English name became "John Smith's Warbler". Its Cherokee or Apache name was and is unchanged. This is a symptom of a common Anglosphere/American perspective - that US culture and the English language belongs to and must somehow reflect the peoples of the world, and not just the English and their colonies.

subjectsigma 3y ago

It’s funny how it’s never about politics, only about good ideas. The names “blacklist” and “whitelist” were perfectly fine to describe the completely innocuous things they are, and everyone had no problem understanding them for hundreds of years. All of the sudden they’re “unclear” and “not very descriptive”, and we need to pick names that are “informative and meaningful”. Weird, the timing of that determination. I would respect the people advocating for this stuff a lot more if they weren’t blatantly using doublespeak to my face