I have a rather pedestrian question regarding the bird naming issue. My
impression is that having a unique name for a species ensures that everyone
has a universally understood way to refer to, say, a Clark’s Grebe. Changing
names imposes a cost in that, at least for a time, there are multiple names
for the same thing. At this point, I believe all of my field guides still
refer to Western Scrub-Jay, not California Scrub-Jay. If Clarks’ Grebe is
renamed, the field guides are outdated, links on the internet are outdated,
television programs are outdated, etc. David Attenborough’s BBC videos
(filmed in Oregon) will forever refer to Clark’s Grebe, and if my Google
search is any indication, they are a popular result for that bird. On one
level, this may seem trivial (and maybe it is), but it undermines the goal
of a common unique identifier for a species.
Is anyone aware of any research that attempts to quantify the costs of
changing a common name for a bird species? There may be benefits to
changing names, but there is also a cost and one needs to consider both
sides of the equation, and I wonder if there is anything useful on the cost
side.
Jason Crotty
Portland
