Mr. Walker,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I fully understand that the AOS does not control the naming of towns, counties or states. You wrote in your response, “We have to have consistent names for things in order to effectively communicate.”
We can actually agree on this point. I contend that the path to that consistency would be to keep the original common names regardless of whether they’re allegedly offensive to someone. It might even spur more research into a bird one might find otherwise uninteresting.
My point is twofold:
1. Renaming a bird, despite the bird’s indifference to human eponyms, muddies the waters for those interested in researching a particular species.
2. History is often rich with dichotomy, and understanding the way in which people lived and thought in the past is an invaluable tool for developing a balanced worldview. Beyond the scope of the AOS, altering the language and censoring history is insidious and ultimately destructive. What is allowed to persist is ultimately decided by ideologues who usually have narrow views of reality.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” - George Orwell, 1984
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