2l6 Correspondence. [J u, y 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



[Correspondents are requested to write brie Ay and to the point. No attention will 

 be paid to anonymous communications.] 



The Popular Names of Birds. 



To the Editors of The Auk : — 



Sirs: The 'powers that be,' I understand, are preparing a 'Check List,* 

 and revising the scientific and popular names of our birds. 



There is no doubt that scientific names are entirely in the hands of 

 scientists, but it seems to be overlooked that popular names are just as 

 completely in the hands of the people. Scientists may advise, but not 

 dictate on this point. A short analysis of the principle of common 

 names may place the matter in a new light. 



A bird's name, to be popular, must be distinctive, and in accordance 

 with the genius of our language. Examples of such are Thrush, Rail, 

 Heron, Hawk, Crane, Night-Jar, and many others. These are truly 

 popular names, evolved originally out of a description, handed down and 

 condensed and changed until they have assumed their present terse, 

 abrupt, and, to a foreign ear, uncouth forms, but, nevertheless, forms in 

 accordance with the pervading spirit of the Saxon tongue; or, in other 

 words, they are really popular. 



On the other hand, look at the so-called popular, but really translated, 

 scientific or spurious English names given to our birds, taking as ex- 

 amples the following: Baird's Bunting, Leconte's Sparrow, Wilson's 

 Green Black-capped Flycatching Warbler, Bartram's Sandpiper, Sprague's 

 Lark, Wilson's Thrush, Black Ptilogonys, Semipalmated Tattler, Fasci- 

 ated Tit, Florida Gallinule, etc. 



Surely, the gentlemen whose names are applied to these birds have 

 not so slight a hold on fame as to require such aids as these to attain it, 

 if indeed aids they be, which I question; for such nomenclature cannot 

 stand the test of time. 



If you show to an 'out-wester' the two birds mentioned above as 

 Baird's Bunting and Leconte's Sparrow, and tell him that these are their 

 names, he will probably correct you, and say one is a 'Scrub Sparrow,' 

 the other a 'Yellow Sparrow.' Convince him that he is wrong, and in a 

 month he will have forgotten all but the names he formerly gave them ; 

 they are so thoroughly appropriate and natural that they cannot be for- 

 gotten The next name in the list above given is clumsy enough to 

 strangle itself with its own tail. A lad on the Plains once brought me a 

 Neocorys spraguei, and asked its name. I replied that it was Sprague's 

 Lark. Soon afterward he came again ; he could not remember that 

 name; sol told him it was a 'Skylark,' and he never forgot that. On the 

 Big Plain that seed was sown, and not all the scientists in America can 

 make, or ever could have made, the settlers there call that bird anything 

 but 'Skylark.' And I consider that lad precisely represented the English- 

 speaking race; he rejected the false name, and readily remembered the 



