Common names change all the time, and from place to place as well. That's a
big part of why Linneaus developed his system in the first place - so that
there would be, in at least one arena, (that of science) a _single_ name
(oh, all right, a binomial...) that would _always_ mean the _same_ thing to
_all_ of the participants in discourse.
"You say tomaayto, I say tomaahhto...."
Bruce
----- Original Message -----
From: "T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>
To: <Danvarner@aol.com>
Cc: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: Book Search
> On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 Danvarner@aol.com wrote:
>
> > Ornithologists here in the States monkey around with common names
all
> > the time. I don't know why and it's very irritating. For instance, the
> > "Whistling" Swan is now officially the "Tundra" Swan, the old
"Baltimore"
> > Oriole is now the "Northern" Oriole. The Sparrow Hawk was changed to
Kestrel,
> > but the European Kestrel is a very different bird.
>
> My favorite is "rock dove" for a certain extremely common, often urban,
> bird that EVERYONE ELSE calls by another name....
>
> Mandating vernacular English names is a pretty silly and redundant
> idea, IMHO.
>
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> T. MICHAEL KEESEY
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