The Audubon Society is renaming hundreds of birds. The changes include adding descriptions of birds reflecting their characteristics while also removing names of people who may represent immoral behavior — such as owning slaves. For example, the McCown Longspur is no longer named after the Confederate general — in 2020, it became the Thick-billed Longspur. (And all this time I thought “Longspur” was the general’s name.)
That being the criteria, these birders should change their own name — because John James Audubon was a slave owner. But there is strong resistance to any change. Maybe they just don’t want to redo all their official stationery. Even if that’s the case, they should at least change their logo from The Great Egret to The Hypocritical Crane.
Reading about changing names made me think that Barbarians should look at places in our town named after people and determine if there’s any reason to change their names. Here’s what I found: