The American Ornithological Society said Wednesday it will change all English bird names currently named after people. AOS said it's being done to change naming conventions clouded by racism and misogyny.
Here’s a better source that suggests that they are interested in changing birds named after people, rather than birds named after slurs. It’s linked in this article. I really hope that shames op. We need to be better.
Whether or not those people were bigots, they were probably white and male. Same as the anatomists that named the lady parts.
There’s just a tradition of the first person to scientifically describe a “thing” getting to name it.
It’s not great, but people that get to travel the world describing species and knowing enough to scientifically describe lady parts, etc are not poor people, at least until post war science. They still would have been mostly white and male, but they wouldn’t have had to be as much independently wealthy.
You actually seem to have got it.
Here’s a better source that suggests that they are interested in changing birds named after people, rather than birds named after slurs. It’s linked in this article. I really hope that shames op. We need to be better.
Whether or not those people were bigots, they were probably white and male. Same as the anatomists that named the lady parts.
There’s just a tradition of the first person to scientifically describe a “thing” getting to name it.
It’s not great, but people that get to travel the world describing species and knowing enough to scientifically describe lady parts, etc are not poor people, at least until post war science. They still would have been mostly white and male, but they wouldn’t have had to be as much independently wealthy.