One volume, 370 pages and 1,100 species: what their names stand for, both common and scientific? Let me try one particular species.
Knowing that Eurasian Wren’s scientific name is Troglodytes troglodytes, and that troglodyte is a cave-man, I was always puzzled why that little bird has such a rude name, a downright insult of a name. Observing it exploring the hollows under the exposed roots on a steep cliff-side, I asked myself could this be the reason? Now, let me see what Ray Reedman says about it.
He explains that Wren has Germanic roots referring to its often cocked-up tail, but what about Troglodytes? “Troglodytes refer to its cave-dwelling habits since it builds a round nest with a side entrance that is often placed in a crevice or hole at ground level.” Close enough. Reedman continues with a few bits of folklore, ending with an interesting note that prior to the modern formalisation of bird names, the word wren was often used as a generic word for other small songbirds!
The Vanishing Mew Gull is a comprehensive dictionary of bird names of the Western Palaearctic, as well as their history. In the Preface, the author wrote: “As David Attenborough put it, ‘the first task of ornithology was to name birds’, adding “I felt that it was time to look at names from that more specific perspective, with reference to the birds that occur in the biogeographic zone most relevant to British birdwatchers.”
This book presents all the birds of the Western Palaearctic, covering about 10% of the world’s bird species. Each species is considered in order, discussing aspects of both common and scientific names, as well as supplementary information such as status, appearance and history. In total, 103 bird families are treated, which are further randomly divided into 16 sections. Reedman has chosen to follow the taxonomy and sequence of the IOC World Bird List (v14.1).
This is a kind of a book that I feel like checking after every other birding outing, to find out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything else, including the bird names.
The Vanishing Mew Gull: A Guide to the Bird Names of the Western Palaearctic
Author: Ray Reedman
Publisher: Pelagic Publishing, London
Publication year: 2024
ISBN: 9781784274627
Format: Hardback
Page count: 374
I am curious, is the title of the book explained somewhere? It makes it sound more like the book is about extinction rather than bird names ….
Caveman as a derogatory term is of course silly in the context of an Ice Age. I have always loved that scientific name for Jenny Wren as the name is bigger than the bird.
It is explained. Mew Gull was the name of the American subspecies, which was uplifted to a full species under a different name. And the European one is called a Common Gull. The word “mew” is vanishing, a pity in a way, because it predates the word “gull”, it meant “gull” before the “gull” was introduced.
Mew = meeuw (in Dutch, a very conservative language). The word won’t vanish any day soon fortunately.