Many North American birds bear names with racist roots. That’s beginning to change
As the US continues to reassess its relationship to racism, offensive sports team and school names have changed. Up next? Bird names.
Bird Names for Birds is a grassroots initiative aiming to change eponymous common names of birds, specifically in North America, arguing that many have been named after problematic people.
Take the Hammond’s flycatcher, named for William Alexander Hammond, a former US surgeon general, said Jordan Rutter, co-founder of the initiative. Hammond, Rutter said, attempted to collect brains of killed Indigenous people for study, and also wrote that Black people were “little elevated in mental or physical faculties above the monkey of an organ grinder,” as noted on the initiative’s website.
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