What makes a good bird name?

• I must have been about three years old and had discovered a blackbird nest unusually accessible in our garden hedge.
• I take some small consolation from the likelihood that this encounter helped forge a lifetime of fascination and involvement with birds.
• In the hope of opening that bridge to all, the American Ornithological Society recently announced it would replace all bird species named after people in North America.
• The history of bird naming in the British Isles offers some solutions.

It takes a village to name a bird

• We know of more than 7,000 folk names in English for about 150 species of British bird.
• For example, the grey heron has 180 recorded English folk names, and the wren 164.

• Bird names evoke strong emotional connections – potentially linking us not only with specific encounters with birds, but with the context and people who experienced them.
• It indicates that whoever coined this name recognised that the bird was singing the songs of other, more familiar species – and the namer knew these songs.

Passed down with care

• Many of the folk names given to other species were probably coined by or for children.
• Names like “scribble-lark” and “scribbling schoolmaster” for bunting species, whose eggs appear to have been written on, suggests (as do many more such names) a fascination with nests and eggs.

• We know, however, that despite the plethora of local names, they were handed down from generation to generation with great precision.
• These names were largely collected by ornithologists like Little, who wanted to know what birds were present throughout the British Isles.
• But they were agreed through consent with no intention, as evidenced through numerous bird books of the time, of these superseding or replacing the local names.
• It can only be hoped that renaming birds after their own qualities will help to open the wonder and love of birds to all people.

Andrew Gosler has received funding from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.