Taha taha taha: South African bird names across time, language and usage

Abstract

Humans find birds important as food, symbols, competitors, and objects for amusement or study, and give names to different groups or species of bird. However, a single bird may have many names, likely related to different contexts. This article proposes that each bird name can be placed on the intersection of three contextual axes: 1) diachronic, with the name changing over time; 2) taxonomic, reflecting its place in a scientific or folk classification system; and 3) stylistic, according to the formality of the name, with its subaxis of compliance with regional versus global English naming norms. In South Africa, these axes float in a multilingual soup of indigenous, imported and modified languages, providing a fascinating diversity in bird naming. For instance, Austin Roberts in 1940 used the name Golden Bishop Bird Taha taha taha for the southern African race of the stunning bee-like Yellow-crowned Bishop, ‘taha’ taken from the Tswana word for finch and rendered in scientific Latin. This splendid formal name no longer exists, having succumbed to scientific progress and the necessity for global conformity in English bird naming. Using these intersecting onomastic axes provides a framework for additional study of bird names in South Africa and elsewhere.

Keywords: avian nomenclature, diachronic analysis, folk taxonomy, global-regional dichotomy, Linnaean taxonomy