Learning the scientific names of birds
Last month, I wrote about the common names of birds, and the planned changes to some of those names. In the past, I've written about the folk names of birds. But there are also the scientific names of birds, the multi-part, latinized names used by the ornithological community around the world. Instead of California quail, scientists employ the name Callipepla californica. Instead of lesser goldfinch, they say Spinus psaltria. There are a number of good and life-enriching reasons to learn these names.
Scientific names are put into forms that look like Latin. Sometimes they may be words that actually existed in the classical Latin spoken by ancient Romans, sometimes they are adapted from ancient Greek and sometimes they are adapted from words in modern languages.
First, a brief primer on how scientific names work. When referring to one particular bird, ornithologists employ a two-part or binomial name consisting of the genus name and the specific epithet (i.e. indicating the species). For the lesser goldfinch's case, Spinus is the genus and psaltria indicates the species. A first reason to learn scientific names is therefore to recognize the relatedness of different birds: The genus Spinus also contains the American goldfinch (Spinus tristis) and the pine siskin (Spinus pinus), for example.
Scientific names are put into forms that look like Latin. Sometimes they may be words that actually existed in the classical
Latin spoken by ancient Romans, sometimes they are adapted from ancient Greek and sometimes they are adapted from words in modern languages. The most obvious example of this borrowing can be seen in scientific names that simply recognize the same people currently honored in the common names: Bewick's wren and Anna's hummingbird, for example, are rendered scientifically as Thry