Initial reactions to the publication of the IOC list of Recommended English names range from enthusiastic to cautious, as predicted in the introduction. Summarized below are the initial known adoptions by principal ornithological societies, publishers, and local bird lists, as well as (links to) published reviews.

Adoptions and Editorial Policy

1. British Ornithologists' Union (from Chris Perrins)

The BOU decided to effectively go with G&W [in Ibis] except for the 'after-hyphen' Caps. There seems to have been a lack of understanding of this - partly of course stemming from not reading the rules! But I do think we under-estimated the complexity of this esp. for the non-English speaker.

The reasons for this decision are as follows:

  • BOU needs to update its English names, especially for Ibis (Records Committee may well continue to use UK vernacular as well).
  • Choices are fairly limited basically only two current lists - HBW being widely used and G&W - only recently appeared so less well 'tried' but backed by IOC.
  • G&W can be up-dated at will by submissions to IOC.
  • Many people were comfortable with HBW, but it has two main drawbacks -
    • It is not dynamic in the sense that there are no plans for developing it with time. Discussions are taking place about HBW's future after the series is completed, but nothing yet emerged.
    • There is no list available. Because in the past HBW has found that advance planning of the lists of distant volumes always resulted in them having to be done again (because of changes etc) they now only plan the lists for each volume as its preparation comes up. So, there will be no final list for another 4 years or so.
  • G&W list exists.
  • In practice the two are related because Vol 1 of HBW says (p25) 'Vernacular English names have been based on those selected, on the basis of extensive international correspondence, by B.L.Monroe, and published in Sibley & Monroe 1990; these have already been chosen to act as a basis for the standardization of English nomenclature planned for the 1994 International Congress, and in future volumes the intention is to follow the official list adopted by the congress.'

2. Handbook of the Birds of the World (from Josep del Hoyo and Andy Elliott, editors)

We will probably follow the 'content' of the names in 99-100% of the cases, but will maintain our own format.

We are now completing Volume 12 of the 16 HBW volume series and it does not seem to us logical or helpful to change the structural components that have been used throughout the series to date. If this IOC list of English names had been available at the beginning of the series, we would have had a much stronger tendency towards following it throughout the series.

Our intention for the remainder of the HBW series is, in principle, to aim to stick to what we might call the 'substance' of their names, except for odd species for which we have strong feelings that their selected name is not the most appropriate - but at this stage we should stress that perhaps this will never occur! They themselves left the door open to future modifications, so we won't feel that there is anything greatly wrong in the odd disagreement, should this occur.

As regards compound names, our intention is pretty much the same: if they use two words, one word or hyphenation, we shall aim to follow them unless we disagree strongly. At this stage we are not yet sure how much we may differ on this score.

In hyphenated names we always follow the hyphen with a small letter, rather than the American system that they have (perhaps not surprisingly) adopted. This was, of course, a decision taken right at the start of the series, and to be honest if we had to decide ourselves right now we still prefer it. It seems to us that the system of using a post-hyphenation capital initial letter when the second name refers to the family in which the species belongs is rather a complicated system for vernacular names, which should we believe aim to be as simple as possible for the non-specialist to be able to follow and use easily and correctly. Thus, we shall have "Chestnut-fronted Shrike-babbler" rather than "Chestnut-fronted Shrike-Babbler". Also in this case there seems to be considerable doubt as to whether or not Pteruthius are true babblers anyway.

3. Tree of Life - Aves, Neornithes

IOC list is the initial working species framework for tree construction

4. The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World , Sixth Edition 2007 (from Preface by Fitzpatrick)

"The recent English names suggested by Frank Gill and Minturn Wright on behalf of the International Ornithological Congress will undoubtedly spur much conversation on this topic. Our first electronic update available soon... will include a comprehensive list of species having different common names in the Clements and IOC lists."

David O. Matson and Dave Sargeant have compiled a master Excel file that compares the IOC species list with that in Clements (6e), and generously allowed us to make this work available through this website. Please note that this copyrighted file is not available for commercial use. Click this link to access Clements vs IOC. 

5. Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (from E.C. Dickinson, Ed.)

Thank you for keeping me in the loop. I have forwarded your e-mail to all members of the Howard & Moore who affect decisions on vernacular names and have reminded them that I have told you that we will work towards a commonality. Realistically I do not expect this will be achieved in one step or even two, but with goodwill we can eventually get there.

6. Danish Ornithological Society/BirdLife Denmark

The Danish Ornithological Society's list of Danish names for all birds of the world follows the IOC World List. The Danish names are published in the new book "Danske navne pa alverdens Fugle (2008)" and on the website of the socieety.

7. African Bird Club (Forwarded by D. B. Donsker)

The African Bird Club informing has completely revised their African Bird List. As part of the update, they have referenced the IOC List and names. Here's a blurb from their Introduction to the revised list:

Changes include:

  • Updates to Clements's checklist dated July and December 2005. (It is noted that a 7th edition of this checklist is due for publication in January 2007 and will be incorporated as appropriate in due course.)
  • Updates to Howard & Moore's checklist dated 31 January 2006 at Howard & Moore update (PDF)
  • Handbook of Birds of the World volumes 10 and 11 (to end of warblers and flycatchers).
  • The IOC list of English Bird Names has been incorporated. Also the single asterisk following a secondary English name now indicates that this is the IOC preferred name (previously the asterisk indicated the name used by the Sinclair & Ryan fieldguide).

8. AOU Checklist of North American Birds

Annual updates of the seventh edition (1998) are available online.

The NACC invited the IOC North America subcommittee to submit proposals for change. The first proposal submitted April 2007 invited the NACC to align their guidelines for spelling and use of compound names (see 6th edition of the AOU Checklist of North American birds) with those recommended by the IOC. They rejected this proposal (see Auk 124:1472).  This decision separates the AOU from other leading ornithological institutions and publishers (BOU,WOS,DOS,HBW,DK,ToL project etc.).

9. Birds of Africa: South of the Sahara (From Sinclair and Ryan's introduction, see also Kaestner review in Birding, 39 [3], page 86)

"The decision on a single set of common names was taken out of our hands to some extent by the International Congress..... which after much heated debate came up with the list we use here. We do not personally like all the choices made, but in the interests of attaining a unifed list we have adopted them. However, we retain major synonyms in parentheses." 

10. German bird list (from Peter Barthel)

The list of German birds with the new English IOC names for the participants of the IOC is finished now. Compared to the original version, only 47 names had to be changed, and most of them are much better now.

There are changes I liked very much, like e.g. Short-toed Snake Eagle, Rosy Starling and Long-tailed Bushtit. On the other hand, Pomarine Skua is not logical, and Great Black-headed Gull is much longer than Pallas's Gull, invites confusion with Great Black-backed Gull and makes a modifier necessary for the Common Black-headed Gull, which will never be used because the name of this really common bird is far too long now. And I'm afraid that most Europeans are not really happy with the Kurrichane Buttonquail. But that's what happens in democratic committees with members from several continents ...

11. Checklist of the birds of Switzerland (Der Ornithologische Beobachter 103: 271-294 (2006)

This multilingual work adopts IOC English names

12. Passerine Birds of South America (UTexas Press, in press) (from R Ridgely)

We follow the IOC List. A couple of quibbles, but we are following it in by far the majority of cases. I hope others are too? (RSR)

13. DK Publishers

Adopts IOC names guidelines (including capitalized bird names) as master list for Birds: The Definitive Photographic Guide ( 2007). Link to come

14. BirdLife International  

BLI released an first draft (v 0) of their world species list for comments. It is presented as a well-annotated Excel spreadsheet available for download at <http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/downloads/BirdLife_Checklist_Version_0.xls>, supplemented by additional information on the web at <http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/taxonomy.html>. Recommended IOC names, when different, are included in a column of alternative names.  In their own words:

"For each species the common name officially adopted by BirdLife is taken from the main source used to determine the scientific name. Additional common names from the other sources are also stored, as are accented names. It should be noted that this work was undertaken parallel to that carried out by the IOC and recently published by Gill and Wright (2006). We have had not yet had time to consider their findings and proposals but we have also stored the common names from Gill and Wright (2006) where scientific names match electronically (c.90% taxa). In order to maintain global consistency, additional rules have been applied to the name officially adopted by BirdLife (but not to common names of taxa that are Under Review)."

15. Wilson Journal of Ornithology

The Editor of WJO, Clait Braun, adopted as policy for that journal the IOC recommended names for bird species outside of North and Middle America, the province of the AOU Checklist Committee (NACC)..