Bird Name-a-thon: Categorizing English bird names using crowdsourcing

Abstract

Common names of species are important for communicating with the general public. In principle, these names should provide an accessible way to engage with and identify species. The official common names of species have historically been labile without standard guidelines, even within a language. Currently, there is no systematic assessment of how often common names communicate identifiable and biologically relevant characteristics about species. This is a particular issue in ornithology, where common names are used more often than scientific names for species of birds in written and spoken English, even by professional researchers. To gain a better understanding of the types of terminology used in the common names of species and their frequency of use, we used a crowdsourcing approach and recruited a total of 85 professional ornithologists and non-professional participants to classify unique descriptors in the English common names of all recognized bird species from around the world. Each species' common name was assigned to one of ten categories associated with aspects of avian biology, ecology, or human culture. Across 10,906 species of birds, 89% had names describing the biology of the species, while the remaining 11% of species had names derived from human cultural references or local non-English languages. Species with common names based on features of avian biology were more likely to share an evolutionary history or be from the same geographic region, in comparison to species with common names derived from human culture. The crowdsourced data collection also revealed that many common names contained specialized or historic terminology unknown to many of the participants. As the first comprehensive assessment of the state of terminology in English common names of birds, the dataset sheds light on historical approaches to nomenclature and provides insight into how the general public currently engages with species through their names.