Notes to Glossary of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese Bird Names

The 'regularisation' of common names

 

Other sections:
Guide to the Glossary
The development of bird names in CJV
The state of standardisation of bird names in CJV
The influence of orthography
Why I got involved in this glossary
The writing of Japanese bird names in Chinese characters

 

Bird names in natural language resemble an unruly blanket of vegetation. Growing like an impenetrable jungle in some places and leaving others completely bare, they have their own logic that reflects human uses and perceptions of the terrain in which they grow. For those who want to know the underlying topography, this can be a source of perplexity and confusion.

When modern naturalists came up with standard scientific names, they were like surveyors slashing through the undergrowth to get at the terrain below, laying out their pegs (their taxonomy and Latin names) impartially through grassland, jungle, and desert.

This metaphor has its limits, but is useful in understanding the way the Latin names bring order to the taxonomy of birds in a way that ordinary language does not. Since the surveyors themselves use natural language, however, they also try to cut and prune the 'natural vegetation' so that each plant occupies its rightful place. Thus, names in the vernacular languages are also tidied up into serried rows of 'common names'.

In creating common names, two opposing principles can be observed.

1. The first is the principle of using the 'natural vegetation' (pre-scientific vocabulary) where possible, leaving it to the Latin scientific names to show the underlying relationships among species. This is best exemplified by English. In areas of traditional English-speaking habitation where common names are well established, birds in the same genus or family don't necessarily share the same name, e.g., the Anatidae or Scolopacidae. The failure to share the same name is not regarded as a threat to the underlying order because this can be easily seen from the scientific names. Japanese resembles English in its respect for the 'natural vegetation'.

2. The opposite tendency is to modify the 'natural vegetation' in order to bring the common names into conformity with the scientific taxonomy. Names are often changed to fit the taxonomic system, ignoring popular or older usage. Chinese follows this tendency. A simple example is the Chinese name of Pycnonotus sinensis (the Chinese bulbul), a widespread bird popularly known as the 白头翁 bái-tóu wēng or 'white-headed old man'. Mainland naturalists change this to 白头鹎 bái-tóu bēi ('white-headed bulbul') in order to show its proper place in the 'garden' as a member of the bulbuls. The 'common names' in Chinese are probably best not characterised as common names at all. They are in effect scientific names in Chinese, a kind vernacular parallel to the Latin names, designed to uniquely identify each species and its place in the order. They are not meant to follow popular language.

Vietnamese falls somewhere in between. Vietnamese naturalists have developed a relatively simple, efficient system of bird names that apparently owes little to any other language. The system is pleasing and coherent within itself, being based on a limited number of bird names supplemented by physical characteristics (brown-headed, red-rumped, etc.) and geographical names. However, its regularity betrays its systematic origins. Ordinary usage is often ignored and in some cases new words have been pressed into service to fill perceived gaps in the Vietnamese vocabulary.

Possible reasons for this difference in the degree of regularisation between English and Japanese on the one hand and Chinese and Vietnamese on the other, are:

• Length of period of development: English common names developed gradually over a long period of time. In China, outside 'surveyors' had done most of their work (mostly in English and French, some in Japanese) when local Chinese ornithologists came on the scene in the mid-20th century. Chinese ornithologists needed to develop their 'garden' quickly. New bird names virtually had to be mass-produced. A similar situation exists for Vietnamese, which started developing local scientific names even later than Chinese.
• Difference of era: Many English and Japanese bird names date from the 19th century and haven't changed since, part of the innate conservatism of bird names. Chinese and Vietnamese names were developed in the 20th century, when the natural sciences were becoming more specialised and the 'gentleman naturalist' was arguably becoming rarer. Even in English there has been a greater tendency to regularize bird names as time goes on -- one only needs to look at Monroe and Sibley, with their attempts to remove the Palaearctic bias from bird names, to appreciate this. Since naming systems that were comfortable for the British in the 19th century are not necessarily appropriate for the whole world in the 20th, familiar names have been changed to make them more objectively accurate.
• Number of people involved: In English, bird names were developed through the efforts of many. No single person or group had the authority to force bird names completely into a mould. In China and Vietnam, bird names have been developed by a restricted group of specialists, who naturally tend to adopt names in a regular fashion according to their own particular scheme. Familiarity for the general public isn't necessarily a major consideration.
• Difference in linguistic resources and attitudes: In Chinese, there is a well-developed split between the written and spoken languages. People are used to differences between the official or written word (consisting of concise character compounds) and the colloquial or spoken word for the same object. Naturalists tend to look back to the written tradition rather than common usage to supply official bird names.

Zealous regularization has its drawbacks. One is that official lists of bird names are not an accurate guide to bird names in 'real language'. To take an example from Chinese, ornithologists ignore the everyday Chinese word for 'owl' and create a set of regular names based on the written language (see Strigidae). In the eagles, Chinese ornithologists make artificial distinctions not found in common usage (see Accipitridae). Like newly-planted gardens, highly regularised bird names need time to become established. In some cases they may never become truly established in the language of literate speakers.

Names based on the scientific taxonomy also risk being rendered obsolete by advances in scientific knowledge. What is scientifically accepted today may not be tomorrow, and a name that is accurate now may become misleading if that bird is transferred to a new family. Taxonomic changes can even give rise to divergences between languages. The Strigidae again provide a good example. Chinese ornithologists recognise a difference between the genus Bubo and the genus Ketupa, reflected in the standard names, namely 'eagle owls' for Bubo and 'fish owls' for Ketupa. Vietnamese ornithologists treat all members of Bubo and Ketupa as belonging to Bubo, calling both types Dù dì. In other words, the difference between Chinese and Vietnamese names is related more to the scientific dialect of the 'surveyors' than to any real difference between the two languages.

Since the popular names are very important in developing a healthy system of bird names, I've started each family or subfamily in this list with a section called 'General names,' in which normal layman's usage is described briefly. I've also turned to other sources in an attempt to supplement the official names with popular names in the list of specific species. This is difficult in the case of Vietnamese because little material is available either in ordinary dictionaries or on the Internet. I am endebted to Professor Vo Quy of Vietnam National University for his help and advice on some non-official Vietnamese bird names.