Good Riddance, Eponyms
A lot of times, being alone in nature will give me the space I need to think through things, and I love that. I enjoy making observations, and connecting them with ideas I am forming about the world. Recently, I was doing some solo birding along the Price River, smelling the lilac-like, sweet blooms of a Russian olive tree, and I began to think about names. As I was deeply inhaling this wonderful fragrance I heard a Bullock’s Oriole chatter from within the thicket. I found the bird through my binoculars, which wasn’t difficult, since it was an active, neon orange male. It paused in the tree, and started to sing. When it stopped moving, I let my binoculars down, and began to think about what this particular species had been called. Since it had an apostrophe in it, I figured it was one of those eponymous names that the American Ornithological Society decided they would soon be changing. Rather than filtering through the history of all the folks who have birds named after them, and weeding out the problematic ones, they’re just doing away with these eponyms altogether, and replacing them with a more descriptive nomenclature. For a brief moment, I wondered who Bullock was, but my interest quickly returned to the bird that was named after this (likely) man. I watched it as it resumed hopping through the tree, picking insects from the underside of the waxy leaves, continuing its whistled song as it went.
After a few moments, the oriole flew off to the other side of the river and out of my view. I stood in place letting the breeze carry the scents of spring flowers to me, and I thought more about this coming change. I decided a long time ago, that I don’t care too much about birds being named after long-dead naturalists, and that I’m in favor of the revisions. Bird names get updated every year, like Gray Jay being replaced with Canada Jay, Cordilleran and Pacific Slope Flycatcher being lumped into a single species named Western Flycatcher, and Western Scrub-Jay being changed to Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay (a name that’s just going to have to be changed again). There are other ways that we can honor the accomplishments of proto-naturalists that involve much more context, and there’s no reason we need to continue uncritically celebrating the people behind these discoveries (which, let’s be honest, they didn’t discover these birds anyway, they just took credit for it).
I continued my walk along the river. I was out with the intent to watch migrating warblers, which is one of my favorite springtime activities. Warbler watching is more of a sport, since the birds are so active. You have to have a very quick binocular draw to see one, because if you spot a flash of gold in the trees, it won’t be there for long before it ducks back into cover, and your view is obscured by foliage.
I got a few meters away from where I saw the oriole and noticed movement in a low tamarisk. I began to pish, a sound made by pursing the lips and blowing air through them, which mimics an alarm call, and draws curious birds towards you. A tiny warbler approached me, and I saw that it had a yellow chest, with olive wings, and a black cap. It was a Wilson’s Warbler, another bird whose name would be changed in the near future.
Of course not all birds bear the names of people. As I was pishing, I noticed that a much larger golden bird flew up to a high limb of the tree next door. I saw the yellow body, black wings, and red-orange face of a Western Tanager. It spooked as I raised my camera at it, then turned an eye towards me, and posed before flying off.
The birding was a little slow, so I made my way towards an ancient pair of colossal cottonwoods where I end this particular walk. I hoped that the large trees that stand out in the otherwise barren landscape had attracted some migrating warblers. There were a few Yellow-rumped Warblers in the trees, and a Rock Wren calling from the opposite sandstone-studded hillside. After I had seen all the birds in the area, I paused, and continued my line of thinking regarding names.
I wish that other scientific disciplines would follow the American Ornithological Society and do away with the eponyms. I was standing in front of a Fremont cottonwood, and if anyone deserves to be erased from science, it’s John Charles Fremont. Besides the tree, we Utahns have a shrub species called Fremont mahonia, the Fremont River, and the Fremont Culture of indigenous people that called our state home between AD 1 and 1301.1
The most disgusting part is that an entire culture of prehistoric people is named after him. The so called Fremont Culture are the ancestors of Native American tribes that populated the West during Fremont’s time, and the man was a genocidal monster.
“On April 5, 1846, a small military expedition led by Captain John Fremont attacked a seasonal Native American village on the Sacramento River and killed hundreds of Wintu, mostly women and children. The estimates for the official number of dead vary from 120-900.”2
Fremont’s attack set the stage for manifest destiny the forced removal and genocide of western tribes. After what became known as the Sacramento River Massacre, “Fremont ordered that any Indian should be killed on sight.”3 To name anything after this man is wrong, but for the predecessors of tribes he sought to eliminate to bear his name, is grotesque.
There aren’t any birds named after John C. Fremont, so all of the eponyms are outside of my specialty. We’ll need cartographers, archaeologists and botanists to do the same thing that the American Ornithological Society has done in order to expel this man from science. If they follow suit, I’m proud that birders started the trend.
The day was beginning to warm, and I started the walk back to my truck. I heard orioles continue to chatter from the same stand of Russian olives I was birding earlier in the morning. I glanced at the river, and thought about how much joy birds bring to my life. I began to dream of a day when I could take a checklist and mark down a beautiful bird that isn’t potentially marred by the name of a hideously ugly person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_culture
https://www.realclearhistory.com/historiat/2018/04/02/fremont_attack_set_stage_for_native_american_cleansing_287.html#:~:text=On%20April%205%2C%201846%2C%20a,Wintu%2C%20mostly%20women%20and%20children.
https://www.sacramentorivermassacre.org
Great writing and photos, Carl. It’s high time birds get names that don’t immortalize people. Not only is it better for a bird to have descriptive nomenclature for birding purposes, it’s a disservice for the bird’s name to have an apostrophe after some name we don’t know well enough at best, or the name of some historic evildoer at worst. It’s about the birds, not people.
Great reading and the photos were quite enjoyable s well. In your travels as a bird watcher, how many birds have you heard of which have been named after women?