Birds Canada and QuébecOiseaux welcome the official announcement by the American Ornithological Society (AOS) stating all birds named after people, or considered to be exclusionary and harmful will be renamed in North America.
We strongly support initiatives that help make the birding and ornithological community more welcoming and inclusive. It’s time to turn the page on the practice of naming birds after people, and instead focus on bird names that tell us about the birds themselves to provide easier identification and further our appreciation of these incredible animals. We know that some individuals for whom birds were named made valuable contributions to ornithology and we recognize there are other meaningful approaches to honouring their contributions.
We are excited to continue to work with AOS and the broader conservation community to adopt these new names to ensure we are making birding more inclusive, informative and supports the protection of birds.
In order to support this vision, Birds Canada and QuébecOiseaux will continue the work begun several months ago that initiated a joint committee that will review French-language names. We will follow a similar mandate as the one proposed by the AOS committee, which will pay particular attention to the replacement of eponymous and honourific names.
You can read the full statement from the AOS at this link https://americanornithology.org/american-ornithological-society-will-change-the-english-names-of-bird-species-named-after-people/
