[Tweeters] Renaming birds (dropping eponyms)

[Dennis Paulson]

Steve, I can appreciate your viewpoint entirely, but honestly, the term “powerful and/or influential” isn’t appropriate. These are the people who discovered these organisms and made them known to the public through the science that was being practiced at the time. Sure, a few presidents and kings have their names involved, but look into the honorific names of North American birds, and you will find the ornithologists who made them known to all of us, none of them particularly powerful and/or influential. Names of people who weren’t ornithologists refer to people loved and honored by the ornithologists who named the species.

I really don’t believe that most of the people who described these birds did so to gain notoriety. They did so for the same sorts of reasons that most scientists publish their discoveries, to advance the state of knowledge of the world. Again, note that I used the term “most,” as of course I realize that gaining notoriety is a driver of some human behavior. And there are other more selfish reasons at present. Having been in academia, I know about them, but getting tenure and research grants weren’t options in the period we are discussing.

And it is a total fallacy that this was a “person who wanted to memorialize themselves,” as people don’t name animals and plants after themselves! They name them to honor other people who they think deserve the honor because of who they are and/or what they have done.

There are 10 species or subspecies of animals named after me: five dragonflies and damselflies, a frog, a lizard, a rabbit, a bat, and a snail. All were so named to acknowledge the important work I had done, in most cases discovering the animal and collecting and preserving the first specimens of it, but also to acknowledge my contributions to the field. I would say the vast majority of the names we are discussing here have exactly the same rationale, and I still don’t see that there is a more compelling rationale for taking the names away.

Of course the use of my name is entirely in scientific names; none of them is named “Paulsons’s . . . . .” In my giving common names to dragonfly species, including a couple of those paulsoni species, I stayed strictly away from creating any additional eponyms. But I did create common names honoring some of the most important people in the history of dragonfly studies (Selys, Hagen, Calvert, Williamson, Walker, Needham, Westfall) when the species had been described using their name, and I would consider it a real shame if dragonfly enthusiasts in the next decades were robbed of any mention of these important people.

We are losing much by cancelling all of these explorers and scientists, and I have the impression that the proponents for doing so are not doing much to take that into account. The ad hoc committee states: “ . . . . there are other, better opportunities to commemorate historical or living figures who have made important contributions to ornithology; . . . ” But nowhere do they make it clear that they have considered these opportunities. At the very least, how about a published list of all the people who are to be cancelled and what their contributions have been?

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


> On Nov 25, 2023, at 9:19 AM, Steve Loitz <steveloitz at gmail.com> wrote:

> 

> A non-anthropocentric view: I have long thought that wild things and wild places ought not be named for a small group of humans* who happen to have lived during a 200-year long naming spree. More than any other birder I know, I spend much of my time in wilderness, i.e., places outside the reach of, and alteration by, human development, where modern humans are mere visitors. I applauded the McKinley>Denali name change, advocate replacing "Rainier" with "Tahoma," and, although I deeply respect the man, objected to renaming the Olympic Wilderness Area for Dan Evans. 

> 

> *That the small group of humans for which NA birds were named is comprised of powerful and/or influential (now dead) white guys is not my primary beef, although I respect that basis for objection. 

> 

> Sure, the name changes will be a PITA, but nature is so much bigger than us. And, now more than ever, we need to be reminded of that. 

> 

> --

> Steve Loitz

> Ellensburg, WA

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