I agree that when it comes to updating the scientific names & sequence of species on the HK list, it makes sense to refer to a single authoritative taxonomic source, rather than adopting a piecemeal approach. The IOC list may well be suitable for this purpose.
However, I am unconvinced that we should follow the IOC’s list of English names, which consists of a single common name for each species. A prescriptive approach of this kind is, I believe, both wrong in principle and doomed to failure.
Unlike scientific names, common names do not carry taxonomic significance and do not fall within the realm of science. Instead, they reflect traditions of common usage. In cases where two common names are in use, can we say that one is correct and the other is incorrect? Are North American names such as “Oldsquaw”, “Common Merganser” and “Northern Harrier” correct? And if so, does it follow that alternative names for the same species such as “Long-tailed Duck”, “Goosander” and “Hen Harrier” (which are widely used elsewhere in the English-speaking world) are incorrect? This just too simplistic. There can be no single correct name for these species. The names “Oldsquaw”, “Common Merganser” and “Northern Harrier” are used in North America and so are appropriate for those regions and for other regions where American-English is the adopted standard, and the names “Long-tailed Duck”, “Goosander” and “Hen Harrier” are equally appropriate where they are in usage in other parts of the English-speaking world where British-English is the adopted standard. The IOC list, however, insists that there can only be only one English name for each species, which clearly does not reflect actual usage.
No previous regional or world list has succeeded in persuading birders and their associations and journals around the world to use standardized names. Is there any reason to suppose that the fate of the IOC list will be any different? No, I don’t think so. The idea of imposing a single set of English names on a diverse birding community is doomed to failure. In the 4 years since Gill and Wright published their “Birds of the World: Recommended English Names” which preceded the IOC list, two major Asian guides have been published, neither of which conform to each other or to the IOC in their choice of English names. For example, for species whose official IOC names are “Cinereous Vulture” and “Daurian Starling”, Craig Robson (2008) goes for "Cinereous Vulture" and "Purple-backed Starling" and Mark Brazil (2009) for "Monk Vulture" and "Daurian Starling". In the UK, despite the fact that the BOURC, which keeps the official British list, has stated its support for the IOC list and common names, leading birding journals such as British Birds (which has strong BOURC affiliations) and Birding World totally ignore the official IOC-based list and continue to use traditional common names that reflect their readers' preferences. In the USA, the AOU, the keeper of the official US list, follows Clements (or a variant) and not Gill & Wright (2006) or the IOC list. To conclude, conformity of English names across the world is just not going to happen.
In Hong Kong and along the coast of China, there is a rich English-language tradition of writing about and giving names to Chinese birds, which dates back to the 1850s and includes the writings of Swinhoe, Styan, La Touche, Herklots and, more lately, Clive Viney as well as the whole output of HKBWS and the recent China Bird Reports. For some English names it is possible to trace usage back to the 1860s. Robert Swinhoe unfailingly used scientific names to identify a particular species and only rarely mentioned a common name, “Silky Starling” being one example. Generally, though, English names of Chinese birds are remarkably stable in HK birding literature, especially between the 1960s and the 1990s.
This tradition was ignored by authors from the USA who decided that English names which had long usage in Hong Kong and China could be dropped and replaced by other names. King et al’s (1975) Birds of South-east Asia came up with the following to replace long-standing names (shown in brackets):
• “Chinese Egret” (Swinhoe’s Egret)
• “Yellow-hooded Wagtail” (Citrine Wagtail)
• “Light-vented Bulbul” (Chinese Bulbul)
• “Orange-flanked Bush Robin” (Red-flanked Bluetail)
• “Blue Whistling Thrush” (Violet Whistling Thrush)
• “Scaly Thrush” (White’s Thrush)
• “Streak-breasted Scimitar Babbler” (Rufous-necked Scimitar Babbler)
• “Brownish-flanked Bush Warbler” (Mountain Bush Warbler)
• “Pallas’s Warbler” (Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler)
• “Lemon-rumped Warbler” (Pallas’s Leaf Warbler)
• “Inornate Warbler” (Yellow-browed Warbler)
• “Black-throated Tit” (Red-headed Tit)
• “Buff-bellied Flowerpecker” (Fire-breasted Flowerpecker)
• “Red-billed Starling” (Silky Starling)
• “White-shouldered Starling” (Chinese Starling)
King’s new names were not adopted by HKBWS. However, in a fine series of papers which reported on his visits to newly-opened parts of China in the early 1980s, King was allowed to use his own alternative names in the Hong Kong Bird Report, though these were marked with an asterisk to show that they differed from traditional usage. There the situation remained until the early 1990s when Sibley & Monroe published a revolutionary world checklist with very many taxonomic changes based on DNA analysis, a completely revised sequence and a set of recommended English names which strongly relfected North Amewrican traditions and sensibilities. I don’t have a copy of Sibley & Monroe at hand, but as I recall, King was the source of English names of Asian birds and a whole suite of well-established names commemorating Russian explorers were dropped, though names commemorating North American explorers were retained. This list prompted Beaman (1994) to produce a list of recommended names of Palearctic species which was more acceptable to an international audience. However, Sibley & Monroe’s list was championed on both sides of the Atlantic by those who sought standardization. In the UK, despite serious objections by OBC grassroots members, Sibley & Monroe was accepted as a major source of taxonomy and English names for the official OBC checklist. The taxonomy, sequence and English names of the OBC list were in turn adopted in the early editions (but not the 2008 edition) of Robson’s SE Asia field guide and the English and scientific names were also used as secondary source, after Beaman (1994), in the Avifauna of Hong Kong (2001).
Since then, Sibley & Monroe has become obsolete and King’s names such as Yellow-hooded Wagtail, Orange-flanked Bush Robin, Pallas’s Warbler (for the Locustella) and Inornate Warbler have simply failed to win acceptance by birders and no longer appear in the literature,. Scaly Thrush and Lemon-rumped Warbler are now used only with respect to the Himalayan forms.
There are clearly lessons to be learned here. With respect to English names, I strongly feel that HKBWS should defend English-language traditions in Hong Kong and China and retain and restore common English names of long usage in the region.
I also think we are being naïve if we fail to recognise that two distinct models of written English have evolved, a British model and an American model, which for historical reasons have different spheres of interest. Books and journals published in North and South America use the American model with its distinct vocabulary, spelling and punctuation, whereas English-language publications in Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand follow the British model. Here in Hong Kong, of course, English usage follows the British model.
The IOC list clearly reflects an American model. The punctuation, for example, is characteristically American, especially in the over-use and inconsistent application of hyphens. To take owls as an example, the IOC list hyphenates “Eurasian Eagle-Owl” and “Brown Hawk-Owl”, but not “Brown Fish Owl” or “Brown Wood Owl”. The logic of this is hard to understand. Anyone looking through an alphabetical index would find the first one listed among the Eagles, the second among the Hawks, and the other two where they all should be - among the Owls.
Similarly, when it comes to English names for the China list, I do not think that the IOC list should be the only source consulted. I found on the IOC web-page
http://www.worldbirdnames.org/index.html a very useful Excel file prepared by Dave Sargeant and David Matson which compares the latest IOC list (version 2.3, Dec 2009) with the 6th edition of Clements. I think this clearly shows that the IOC list used North American traditions (King-Sibley & Monroe-Clements) in deciding upon English names.
From Sargeant & Mason’s file, I created a China list (c. 1410 species) from the IOC-Clements file and added an extra column with English names from Beaman’s (1994) Palearctic list. The IOC list of English names differs in many instances from Beaman’s list, especially in having fewer commemorative names.
I’d also like to comment quickly on English names stipulated by the IOC for about 80 splits involving Chinese birds. These are either geographical, commemorative or descriptive, or were chosen in the interests of uniformity (never a sufficient reason in my view to overturn a unique or memorable name).
It’s hard to argue against many of the geographical names brought on by the splits, except that they are dull. We get, for example, “Western Osprey”, “Eastern Cattle Egret”, “Himalayan Buzzard” and “Taiwan Scimitar Babbler”. However, I agree with those who think that “Indochinese Yuhina” is a poor choice for the recently-split Yuhina torqueola since this is only peripheral to Indochina and is primarily a South China species, which was originally described by Swinhoe from the border of Guangdong and Fujian. The China Bird Report uses the name “Chestnut-collared Yuhina” which reflects the scientific name and echoes an old English name “Collared Siva”.
As for the new commemorative names, I can’t say I’m thrilled to see “Claudia’s Leaf Warbler”, “Hartert’s Leaf Warbler” and “Kloss’s Leaf Warbler” on the IOC list for species whose English names in the China Bird Report are “La Touche’s Leaf Warbler”, “Goodson’s Leaf Warbler” and “Ogilvie-Grant’s Leaf Warbler”. The species involved are all Chinese breeding endemics, and I would seriously query whether Claudia (who I think was one of La Touche’s daughters) and Kloss (who had very little to do with Chinese ornithology) should be commemorated at the expense of La Touche or Ogilvie-Grant. I do agree, though, that Hartert deserves commemoration.
The new descriptive names are generally prosaic. Where splits are concerned, some names have been coined to highlight a feature which is not present on sister species. To take one example, Garrulax berthemyi a stunning laughingthrush, endemic to South China, with rufous wings & tail and bright blue around the eye, is called “Buffy Laughingthrush” apparently a feature that distinguishes it from the equally stunning, bright rufous “Rusty Laughingthrush” of Taiwan. Clearly, “Buffy Laughingthrush” fails to characterise berthemyi and makes it sound dull. The China Bird Report more accurately calls it “Rufous Laughingthrush”, the name used by La Touche.
A drive for uniformity accounts for a number of changes. Some result in minor gains or are innocuous, such as “Red Turtle Dove” being restored instead of “Red Collared-Dove”, the Trerons all being called “Green Pigeons” and the small Dendrocopos woodpeckers becoming “Pygmy Woodpeckers”. However, there will no longer be any Thick-knee – they’ll all be “Stone-curlews” - and Brown Crake (or Crimson-legged Crake if the subspecies coccineipes is ever recognised as a full species) is to be called “Brown Bush-hen”, an absurd name for a bird of ponds and ditches. The quest for uniformity has led to new English names being coined for a genus. Species in the genus Aegithalos are now to be called “Bush-tits”, with the exception of A. caudatus, which to avoid outraging European birders is still be known as Long-tailed Tit. Here in South China, the official name of A. concinnus, which was discovered by Swinhoe on the coast of Zhejiang and has a long history of being called Red-headed Tit, is now the “Black-throated Bush-tit”.
If anyone would like an electronic copy of the China list comparing English names on the IOC list with Clements and Beaman, e-mail me at <
rwlewthwaite@cuhk.edu.hk>.
Richard
