> 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 gro

> 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!)