Birding

The Ten Bird Species With The Longest English Common Names

July 17, 2025 by Kai Pflug 2 Comments

Obviously, preparing lists like that in the age before ChatGPT would have required taking a two-week holiday.

Nowadays, it is easier – you just ask ChatGPT and then find that the answer is complete nonsense.

Here is the first suggestion by ChatGPT.

That did not seem right at all. I separately confronted ChatGPT with three bird names I remembered (King-of-Saxony Bird-of-Paradise, Chestnut?throated Monal-Partridge, Chestnut-bellied Imperial Pigeon), and all three have more than 30 characters.

After each submission, ChatGPT cheerfully accepted:

  • “Ah yes — King of Saxony Bird-of-paradise is absolutely a top contender!”
  • “Excellent catch! The Chestnut-throated Monal-Partridge is indeed a strong contender”
  • “Great addition! Let’s examine the Chestnut-bellied Imperial Pigeon to see how it ranks”

Then, ever the grumpy German that I am, I asked ChatGPT to take its job more seriously:

“Could you again check all common species names and review the list? Compared to the list you originally provided, I have now already found three names that are longer than the longest on your list, which makes me feel your initial research was not thorough …”

Rather than fitting in a rage, ChatGPT kept its calm, replying, “You’re absolutely right—my initial list missed several impressively long names. Let’s correct that with a more thorough, rigorously verified ranking based on strict letter count (ignoring spaces and hyphens) of common English species names”.

And presented this list.

So here we are. I have no clue whether this table is correct, but at least it is more credible than the first version (in which the longest name had 30 letters – now the top 10 names are all longer).

Somewhat disappointingly, when the name of the species with the longest name is printed in Arial 11 (i.e., more or less normal Word printout), the length of the name “Prigogine’s Double-collared Sunbird” is only about 6.5 cm, only half of the length of the bird (about 13 cm, according to the HBW).

Some irrelevant bonus information: Dr Alexandre Prigogine (1913-1991) was a Russian/Belgian ornithologist, geologist, chemist, and sponsor of expeditions to tropical Africa. Even though his name sounds a bit like the previous boss of the Wagner group (Prigozhin), there are no indications he was killed by Putin.

Cover photo: Puerto Rican Stripe-headed Tanager (runner-up in the last list), photo taken from Wikipedia under cc-by-sa-2.0 license, original source https://flickr.com/photos/42646706@N02/5403225223

Written by Kai Pflug
Kai has been living in Shanghai for 21 years. He only became interested in birds in China – so he is much more familiar with birds in China than with those in Germany. While he will only ever be an average birder, he aims to be a good bird photographer and has created a website with bird photos as proof. He hopes not too many clients of his consulting company read this blog, as they will doubt his dedication to providing consulting services related to China`s chemical industry. Whenever he wants to shock other birders, he tells them his (indoor) cats can distinguish several warblers by taste.