(Karen Freeman, Headline USA) It seems every day something new is being canceled.
From famous bestselling authors such as J.K. Rowling to famous songs from British rock legends to an allegedly racist cow at a state fair, nothing is safe from drawing the ire of the woke thought-police.
Their latest target? Birds.
The American Ornithological Society announced on Wednesday its commitment to “changing all English-language names of birds within its geographical jurisdiction that are named directly after people (eponyms), along with other names deemed offensive and exclusionary.”
The press announcement from AOS’s own website included a statement from society President Colleen Handel explaining the need for the change because “some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today.”
While it may be understandible that some, like the Eurasian penduline tit or even the decidedly less graceful blue-footed booby might be overdue for an update, with the original meanings of their names, undoubtedly, having been lost in translation over the ages, it remained unclear just how far the society intended to go with its aviary revisionism.
Judith Scarl, the society’s executive director and chief executive officer, seemed to suggest that a full-scale ornithological reckoning—similar to that which transpired during the #MeToo movement and following the death of George Floyd—would finally bring bird enthusiasts into the 21st century.
“There has been historic bias in how birds are named, and who might have a bird named in their honor,” Scarl said. “Exclusionary naming conventions developed in the 1800s, clouded by racism and misogyny, don’t work for us today.”
At the time of the announcement, the AOS committee for the “English Bird Names Project” had identified more than 100 species to be renamed, according to the Daily Mail.
Examples of birds requiring a new moniker are:
- Scott’s oriole, named after Civil War Gen. Winfield Scott, who oversaw the forced resettlement of American Indians known commonly as the Trail of Tears
- Audubon’s shearwater, named after the namesake for the National Audubon Society and famous bird illustrator John James Audubon who was also slaveowner
- Anna’s hummingbird, which had the misfortune to be named after the amateur ornithologist Princess Anna de Belle Massena, the mistress of the robes in the court of France’s last empress, Eugenie. What was Princess Anna’s offense? An excerpt from birdnote.org revealed that the aforementioned John James Audubon was rumored to have given the hummingbird its name; however, it was really another renowned naturalist who named the bird in her honor.
The necessity for renaming hundreds of English birds originated from a 2020 petition to the society complaining that common bird names were a “commemoration of ‘men who participated in a colonial, genocidal, and heavily exploitative period of history.’”
As Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, wrote in an article for Front Page Magazine, “When you run out of people to cancel, you have to cancel the birds.”
According to the AOS, the name changes only affect the English naming conventions. Their scientific names, in Latin, will remain. In addition, the society vowed that members of the committee to oversee the renaming would be diverse, with expertise not only in ornithology but also communications.
