All For The Birds: a rant.

 McCown's longspur (Rhynchophanes mcownii) has recently become the thick-billed longspur. This is because the McCown after whom the bird was named was a Confederate general who is famously (one presumes) one of the bad guys (sorry, I'm English: I don't know much about the American Civil War).

The bird's scientific name hasn't been altered.

I can see why the bird's name has been changed, but where do we stop? I suppose, given that there's more or less no one in history who's lived a completely unblemished life, we could change the names of every creature, town and river named after an individual. Perhaps we should. But that would mean not celebrating many achievements.

They're coming for Audubon, now. John James Audubon is famous as an illustrator and cataloguer of the birds of North America. He was also (much less famously) an owner of slaves and a supporter of slavery.

Should we expunge Audubon from the common names of birds? Do we expunge him from the scientific names of birds? Do we continue to celebrate the good he did, while ignoring the bad?

It's not easy. One possible solution might be that if someone is famous for doing good, then their name should continue to be celebrated; but if they are famous for doing evil, then their name should be expunged.

But then what could we have done if Darwin had had an evil grandfather?

Perhaps we should really be calling everything Red, or Scarce, or Boaty McBoatface.

Word To Use Today: a bird's name that doesn't cause embarrassment. This isn't as easy as it sounds. The word lark, for example, comes from the Old English lawerce, and before that it was a germanic word and there's a suggestion that an early form of the word might be linked to the word treason. So even the word lark isn't without taint.