If bird names interest you, so might want to read a protracted
discussion among Australian birders at
http://birding.aba.org/maillist/AU  . I felt the conversation took place
among English-speaking birders who felt a bit crowded by aboriginal
peoples' names for local birds.
        This is not a totally foreign problem in our part of the world; our
Canadian friends maintain English and French versions of bird names.
Still, neither we nor the Canadians pay much attention to the various
names the older North American civilizations (and their various
languages) applied to birds. If you consider Europe, with its rich mix
of languages, things are more ambitious: in my "Field Guide to the Birds
of Britain and Europe," the text is in English, but there are citations
in five European languages for the common names of birds (English,
Dutch, French, German, and Swedish--presumably serving the populations
most often doing birdwatching).
        Here in the central US in Ohio, our names are pretty uniform;
sure, you may run into a farmer who offers to show you a "tallywanger"
or a "spring snowbird," but English nomenclature has become pretty
uniform as those of many native American speakers have clashed and burned.
        Nothing is more uniform than the Latin-based nomenclature scientists
have applied to organisms. Latin is a dead language, hence immune to
change. Few birders recognize the name of "Aquila chrysaetos" refers to
the species we call "golden eagle" and nothing else.  Sometimes the
Latin names are clumsy, but they have the virtue of being unique and
uniform in reference. Scientific names have the virtues of being
understandable to anyone who learns them: by contrast, Ohioans use the
vernacular "golden eagle,"the Dutch use "steenarend," the Germans
"steinadler," the French "aigle royal," and the Swedish "Kungsorn."
        In North America, Europeans have largely submerged the languages of our
predecessors but in places like Australia the aboriginal peoples still
maintain and assert their cultures, including names for birds. In the
old days, we have to admit, various tribes used different names for
identical birds, and the imposition of English serves a purpose of
uniform names; the situation in Australia seems to be unresolved.
Bill Whan
Columbus


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