[Tweeters] Renaming birds (dropping eponyms)

[Steve Loitz]

Dennis,

First, you chose to lead with a rebuttal of an ancillary point in my
statement. I plainly stated that eponyms derived from the names of powerful
and/or influential people (e.g., Lewis, Clark) was NOT my primary beef. I
mentioned it in a footnote. (Note the asterisk in my original post.) Again,
I object to naming wild things or wild places after humans -- of any social
status.

Second, I never suggested that bird eponyms were assigned to "gain
notoriety" or as an ego trip. That was not in my posting. Maybe you've
confused me with someone else.

Third, I respectfully decline to go down the "cancel culture" rabbit hole.
The AOU nor anyone else has suggested that those people be wiped from
history, text books and other reference works.

I have read all of the Tweeters postings on this subject matter. I
appreciate the thoughtful offerings of you and others, but I remain unmoved
from my belief that wild things and wild places should not be named after
individual humans.

Steve Loitz
Ellensburg



On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 2:45 PM Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>
wrote:


> Steve, I can appreciate your viewpoint entirely, but honestly, the term

> “powerful and/or influential” isn’t appropriate. These are the people who

> discovered these organisms and made them known to the public through the

> science that was being practiced at the time. Sure, a few presidents and

> kings have their names involved, but look into the honorific names of North

> American birds, and you will find the ornithologists who made them known to

> all of us, none of them particularly powerful and/or influential. Names of

> people who weren’t ornithologists refer to people loved and honored by the

> ornithologists who named the species.

>

> I really don’t believe that most of the people who described these birds

> did so to gain notoriety. They did so for the same sorts of reasons that

> most scientists publish their discoveries, to advance the state of

> knowledge of the world. Again, note that I used the term “most,” as of

> course I realize that gaining notoriety is a driver of some human behavior.

> And there are other more selfish reasons at present. Having been in

> academia, I know about them, but getting tenure and research grants weren’t

> options in the period we are discussing.

>

> And it is a total fallacy that this was a “person who wanted to

> memorialize themselves,” as people don’t name animals and plants after

> themselves! They name them to honor other people who they think deserve the

> honor because of who they are and/or what they have done.

>

> There are 10 species or subspecies of animals named after me: five

> dragonflies and damselflies, a frog, a lizard, a rabbit, a bat, and a

> snail. All were so named to acknowledge the important work I had done, in

> most cases discovering the animal and collecting and preserving the first

> specimens of it, but also to acknowledge my contributions to the field. I

> would say the vast majority of the names we are discussing here have

> exactly the same rationale, and I still don’t see that there is a more

> compelling rationale for taking the names away.

>

> Of course the use of my name is entirely in scientific names; none of them

> is named “Paulsons’s . . . . .” In my giving common names to dragonfly

> species, including a couple of those *paulsoni* species, I stayed

> strictly away from creating any additional eponyms. But I did create common

> names honoring some of the most important people in the history of

> dragonfly studies (Selys, Hagen, Calvert, Williamson, Walker, Needham,

> Westfall) when the species had been described using their name, and I would

> consider it a real shame if dragonfly enthusiasts in the next decades were

> robbed of any mention of these important people.

>

> We are losing much by cancelling all of these explorers and scientists,

> and I have the impression that the proponents for doing so are not doing

> much to take that into account. The ad hoc committee states: “ . . . .

> there are other, better opportunities to commemorate historical or living

> figures who have made important contributions to ornithology; . . . ” But

> nowhere do they make it clear that they have considered these

> opportunities. At the very least, how about a published list of all the

> people who are to be cancelled and what their contributions have been?

>

> Dennis Paulson

> Seattle

>

> On Nov 25, 2023, at 9:19 AM, Steve Loitz <steveloitz at gmail.com> wrote:

>

> A non-anthropocentric view: I have long thought that wild things and wild

> places ought not be named for a small group of humans* who happen to have

> lived during a 200-year long naming spree. More than any other birder I

> know, I spend much of my time in wilderness, i.e., places outside the reach

> of, and alteration by, human development, where modern humans are mere

> visitors. I applauded the McKinley>Denali name change, advocate replacing

> "Rainier" with "Tahoma," and, although I deeply respect the man, objected

> to renaming the Olympic Wilderness Area for Dan Evans.

>

> *That the small group of humans for which NA birds were named is comprised

> of powerful and/or influential (now dead) white guys is not my primary

> beef, although I respect that basis for objection.

>

> Sure, the name changes will be a PITA, but nature is so much bigger than

> us. And, now more than ever, we need to be reminded of that.

>

> --

> Steve Loitz

> Ellensburg, WA

> steveloitz at gmail.com

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>

>

>


-- 
Steve Loitz
Ellensburg, WA
steveloitz at gmail.com
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