Grant notes that birds sometimes get re-christened with a different name. Often a bird’s commemorative name—one that honors a bird’s discoverer—will be replaced years later. Case in point: Rivoli’s hummingbird is now known as the magnificent hummingbird. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Reassigning Bird Names”
Martha, more on bird names. I’m not going to let this go.
Okay.
When you start to look into bird names, one of the things you find out is that the bird names have changed.
For example, a lot of birds used to be named for the person who discovered them or the person who made them known. These are called commemorative names.
So, Rivoli’s hummingbird or Bancroft’s night heron. Do you know either of these?
No, not at all.
Neither of those names exist anymore. I mean, they’re not used. Now they’re called the Magnificent Hummingbird and the Yellow-Crowned Nightheron.
I like the Magnificent Hummingbird. That’s a great new name.
It’s kind of a shame that the history of the discoverer has kind of disappeared along with the old name. Although some of the changes are for the better, there was a bird that used to be called the Thorn Scrub.
That’s T-H-O-R-N-S-E-R-U-B. And now it’s called Couch’s Kingbird.
I think the new name is better than the old one. But what’s really great about this bird is the Latin name.
It’s of the genus Tyrannidae, and so the full name is Tyrannus coochii, I believe. C-O-U-C-H-I-I.
Is that coochii or coochii? Maybe coochii. Maybe coochii.
I’m not quite sure if it follows the English pronunciation. In any case, I’m imagining this little vicious—it’s called Tyrannus.
It’s this little vicious bird with, like, tiny forearms and big, big, sharp teeth.
Well, Tyrannus is king in Greek. That’s right.
So it’s the king of the couch. It’s the bird that controls the remote.
Well, if you want to talk to us about bird names, you can talk to us on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org, or give us a phone call, 1-877-929-9673.
