Racist Bird Names Examples: Identify and Replace Them

Yes, some bird common names are genuinely racist or ethnically offensive, and a handful have already been officially changed. The most documented examples in North America and Europe include Oldsquaw (now Long-tailed Duck), McCown's Longspur (now Thick-billed Longspur), and Hottentot Teal (now Blue-billed Teal). These names embedded racial slurs or derogatory colonial ethnonyms directly into everyday bird vocabulary, and professional ornithological bodies have been actively replacing them since the early 2000s, with momentum accelerating significantly after 2020.

Why racist bird names are a problem (and how to spot them)

Common bird names are the ones regular people actually use. Unlike scientific (Latin) names, which are governed by strict international codes and rarely change, common names are informal, vernacular, and historically accumulated whatever language was fashionable or acceptable at the time they were coined. That means 18th and 19th century colonial naming habits, which were often casually racist, got baked into the everyday vocabulary birders still use today.

The problem is specific and practical: when a common name contains a slur, using it in a field guide, a classroom, or a community bird count means repeating that slur every single time you refer to the species. For Indigenous, Black, and Roma communities especially, seeing their identities reduced to a shorthand label on a duck or a teal is a real and ongoing harm, not a historical curiosity.

Spotting a potentially problematic name is easier once you know the patterns to look for. The main red flags are:

• Ethnonyms used as descriptors: names that use a racial or ethnic group's name (or a colonial nickname for that group) as if it's a neutral adjective
• Known slurs embedded in the name, sometimes slightly disguised by spelling or compound forms
• Honorific names tied to figures with documented histories of racism, slavery, or violent colonial activity
• Terms that describe Indigenous or colonized peoples with language that has since been recognized as contemptuous

It's worth distinguishing these from names that are merely awkward, inaccurate, or just weird. A bird name can be confusing, poorly descriptive, or historically muddled without being racist. The names that cause real concern are the ones that trace directly back to a slur or a derogatory colonial label for real human beings. That's a narrower category than people sometimes assume, but it's also a real one.

Common examples of racist or outdated bird names

Here are the most frequently cited and well-documented examples, the ones that come up in peer-reviewed ornithology literature, official committee decisions, and mainstream news coverage. If you are wondering what to look for in that list, the article also explains how common names became offensive and how committees choose replacement names. These are the names people are actually searching for and encountering in older field guides.

A separate but related category is names involving the word 'nigger' or its direct derivatives. Several geographical and natural features (including plant and animal common names) historically carried this term, and ornithological literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries is not immune. These have largely disappeared from modern field guides but still appear in archival texts and historical species accounts, which is part of why researchers and educators encounter them and need to know what they're dealing with.

Swedish ornithology is a particularly rich case study here because Swedish birding organizations did a comprehensive audit of vernacular names and found multiple examples in a single sweep. The Guardian documented several of these, and BirdLife Sweden's process became a model that other national bodies have referenced.

Where the names came from: etymology, history, and naming conventions

Most problematic bird common names fall into two historical patterns: colonial ethnonyms turned descriptors, and honorific eponyms for people whose legacies are now contested.

Colonial ethnonyms as descriptors

When European naturalists named birds in the 18th and 19th centuries, they routinely used the names of local peoples they encountered (or the dismissive nicknames colonizers gave those peoples) as simple geographic or descriptive shortcuts. 'Hottentot' was a Dutch colonial label for the Khoikhoi, and it got applied to a teal found in their territory the same way you'd say 'African teal' today. The problem is that 'Hottentot' was never a neutral geographic term from the perspective of the people it described. It was contemptuous from the start.

'Squaw' has a slightly more complicated etymology. Merriam-Webster records its first known use in English in 1622, derived from an Algonquian word. For a period it may have been used neutrally to mean 'woman' in some Indigenous languages, but Wiktionary's usage notes document that the English sense shifted toward contempt in the late 1800s, and a peer-reviewed analysis in the journal IBIS explicitly describes it as misogynistic and racist in its modern English form, specifically as it was applied to Indigenous women in a colonial context. By the time 'Oldsquaw' was being widely used in American birding, 'squaw' had already taken on its offensive connotation.

Eponyms for contested historical figures

McCown's Longspur is the clearest North American example of this second pattern. John P. McCown was a United States Army officer who became a Confederate general, meaning he took up arms against the Union in defense of slavery. The American Ornithological Society (AOS) formally acknowledged concerns about this when it renamed the species Thick-billed Longspur, and the decision prompted new AOS guidelines for handling potentially offensive eponyms across the board. The replacement name follows a morphological pattern: it describes the bird's physical feature (a notably thick bill) rather than honoring a person.

Eponyms as a category are a broader ongoing debate in ornithology, and it's worth noting that not every eponym is racist. Many are simply named after historical naturalists who explored a region. The problem cases are specifically those where the honoree's primary historical association is with slavery, genocide, or violent colonial suppression of the very people whose territories the birds inhabit.

How bird names are officially standardized today

There are two parallel naming systems for birds, and understanding them helps you navigate name changes confidently.

Scientific names (binomial Latin names like Clangula hyemalis for Long-tailed Duck) are governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. They're stable, internationally consistent, and rarely change except for genuine taxonomic reasons. If you need to be certain you're talking about the right species regardless of what country you're in or what guide you're using, use the scientific name.

Common names (English vernacular names) are governed by regional and global committees. The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) maintains the IOC World Bird List, which functions as a global standard for English common names. The IOC explains that it created this system specifically because many birders, educators, and publishers aren't comfortable relying solely on scientific names. The IOC updates its master list twice a year (since January 2018), which means name changes can be formally incorporated on a regular schedule.

In North America, the AOS's North American Classification Committee (NACC) handles English name decisions for species on the North American checklist. NACC evaluates proposals, follows published guidelines for name formation, and documents its decisions. eBird, the Cornell Lab's citizen-science platform used by millions of birders, ties its baseline taxonomy to the IOC list, so when the IOC updates a name, eBird eventually reflects that change. That's the pipeline from committee decision to the app on your phone.

The IOC's principles note that stability is a genuine consideration: if a vernacular name has been the primary name for a species for a long time, committees weigh that history before changing it. This is partly why some changes took decades to happen. But the same principles allow for changes when names are inaccurate, misleading, or offensive, which is the formal opening that organizations have used to remove slur-based names.

How to replace racist names: inclusive alternatives and naming patterns

The replacement names that have been approved follow a recognizable logic, and you can use that same logic when you're choosing respectful vernacular alternatives in your own writing, teaching, or casual birding conversations.

The most common replacement patterns are:

1. Morphological description: name the bird after a physical feature. Thick-billed Longspur (replacing McCown's Longspur) is the textbook example. Blue-billed Teal (replacing Hottentot Teal) does exactly the same thing.
2. Behavioral description: name the bird after what it does, how it moves, or its call. Long-tailed Duck (replacing Oldsquaw) leans on a clear, visible physical feature, but behavioral naming is equally valid.
3. Geographic description using modern, neutral place names: name the bird after where it lives using contemporary, non-colonial geography rather than colonial administrative terms.
4. Ecological description: name the bird after its habitat, diet, or ecological role.
5. Use the scientific name as an anchor: when in doubt, referring to the Latin binomial ensures you're unambiguous while the community catches up on vernacular usage.

The AOS published formal Guidelines for English Bird Names (June 2020) that lay out how names should be formed and evaluated, specifically addressing how to handle eponyms and offensive terms. These guidelines aren't just bureaucratic housekeeping: they give ornithologists and birding communities a principled framework to argue for name changes and to propose replacements that will actually be accepted by official committees.

Using bird taxonomy respectfully: guidance for researchers and pet owners

If you're a researcher, writer, or educator working with older literature, you'll inevitably encounter these deprecated names in archival sources. The practical approach is to introduce the outdated term once with an explicit note that it's the deprecated name, then use the current official name throughout. Something like: 'the species formerly known as Oldsquaw, now officially the Long-tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis).' This is honest, informative, and doesn't require pretending historical texts don't exist.

For pet bird owners, the situation is a bit different. If you keep a species that has a problematic historical common name, the safest and most current approach is to use the IOC or AOS official name. If you're choosing a personal nickname for your bird, obviously pick something that doesn't derive from a slur. This sounds obvious, but it's worth saying directly because some older pet-bird communities still circulate outdated names in care guides and forum posts, especially for waterfowl and parrots with long records in aviculture.

If you're contributing to citizen-science platforms like eBird or iNaturalist, use the official current common name tied to the IOC taxonomy. eBird documentation confirms it maintains both a common name and a scientific name for every species, so if you're unsure which common name is current, the scientific name will always get you to the right species record, and you can check the current accepted common name from there.

A note for anyone who writes about bird names more broadly: this topic connects naturally to the question of which bird names are simply odd or unfortunate (as opposed to actively offensive), and to the separate question of names that become derogatory when applied to humans rather than birds. This includes cases where derogatory bird names when applied to humans mirror the same slur-based harm and should be avoided in everyday language derogatory when applied to humans rather than birds. The same principle applies when people use “bird” as a direct insult, because calling someone a bird can be offensive in a personal, dehumanizing way calling someone a bird offensive. Those are related but distinct conversations.

How to report or correct problematic usage

If you encounter a racist or outdated bird name being used in a context where you can actually do something about it, here are concrete pathways depending on where you find it.

In formal ornithological contexts

The AOS NACC has published formal guidelines for submitting a name-change proposal, and explicitly states that any member of the ornithological community may submit a proposal. You don't have to be a credentialed ornithologist. You do need to follow the submission format, provide the scientific name as the anchor, document why the current name is problematic, and propose a replacement that follows the AOS naming guidelines. This is how McCown's Longspur got changed: community members and researchers made formal proposals that the committee evaluated and approved.

In educational and community settings

If an older field guide, classroom resource, or birding club newsletter is using a deprecated name, the most effective approach is to point to the current IOC or AOS official name with a brief explanation of when and why it changed. Framing it as 'here's the current official name' rather than 'you're using the wrong name' tends to land better and is accurate. Most birders genuinely don't know the history behind names they've been using for years.

On Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons

If you find a Wikipedia article, file, or category still using a deprecated name, Wikimedia Commons provides two standard pathways: the Edit Request template (for suggesting changes to protected pages) and the Rename template (for proposing that a file or category be moved to a new name). Using these templates routes your request to an editor who can make the change, and providing the IOC or AOS official name as the replacement gives them a clear, authoritative target.

On citizen-science platforms

eBird and iNaturalist both have help centers and community forums. If a name in the platform's taxonomy seems outdated, check whether the IOC has already issued an update and, if so, report it through the platform's feedback or help channel, referencing the specific IOC version where the change was made (for example, 'IOC v11.1, January 2021' for Blue-billed Teal). Platforms update their taxonomy on a lag, so a polite, sourced report can move that process along.

The bottom line is that the machinery for fixing these names exists and is genuinely open to input. The IOC updates twice a year, AOS accepts community proposals, and major digital platforms follow those official lists. You don't need to wait for someone else to notice. If you know the current official name and can point to where it's documented, you have everything you need to push a correction forward.