Upon publishing a photograph of a Wilson’s Warbler under the title Black Cap Jazz Singer a few days ago, reader Tanja Britton (see Tanja’s blog here), left a note alerting me to the American Ornithological Society’s decision to revisit the common names of species within AOS’s jurisdiction that are predicated on the names of the people (white men) who “discovered” or “identified” the bird in question as well as appellatives assigned by the “discoverer” to “honor” others. This would mean the renaming… the reimagining of a number of birds and our relationships with them: Steller’s Jay, Wilson’s Snipe, Baird’s Sandpiper, Audubon’s Oriole, Bachman’s Sparrow, and so on.

Hurray and about time. This “dibs!” approach to naming the beings we share this planet with could hardly reflect a more juvenile mindset. We, all of us, have the right to choose our own names, to imagine ourselves as we wish to be, to present our own identities and not to be enslaved by someone else’s idea of who we should be. We believe the same dignity should be accorded to all beings. And in fact, even in the instance of an “inanimate” object – such as, say, a salmon pool on a river – if one is looking at that landscape and can think only of imposing a person’s name on it, one is not looking closely enough.

Our view at Cutterlight has long been that if one creates a piece of art such as writing, a painting, a piece of music and so forth and one chooses to attach one’s name to said piece of art, it is appropriate and just that the creator’s name live on with that art for as long as the art lives. But this vain nonsense in pursuit of the illusion of immortality wherein buildings, airports, highways, and birding organizations are arbitrarily named after this person or that has always struck us as one of the least attractive impulses in Euro-American culture. The practice is as divisive as it is arbitrary – a fact we seem to be slowly waking up to as a society.

It is often the attitude among indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest that the totem poles they’ve created should be allowed to naturally decay over time rather than preserved. Their view is that all beings and all things have a span in which they exist in a certain state, at the end of which they must be allowed to follow their natural path into the next state of existing.

Amen.

Turning back to the matter of our avian friends…

As the AOS embarks on the enlightened task of reimagining the gray, nondescript names of men attached to various species, let them take one further step and strike from vernacular names disrespectful monikers such as “least,” “dwarf,” “lesser,” “house,” and the sobriquet we find most grating – “common.”

The only thing “common” about Gavia immer, the bird in the above photograph, is the unimaginative minds of whomever agreed this regal being should be so reduced. This bird can reach a bill to tail length of three feet (90 cm), a wingspan of four feet (130cm) and is reported to dive up to 250 feet (76 meters). “Common Loon” my foot.

They are Imperial Divers.

JD