Publisher's Synopsis
The "Names of the Birds of Venezuela: Common, Scientific, Aboriginal" compiles the different names used on the Venezuelan bird species, both in everyday speech and in the scientific community. This book collects the historical information of the common names, in a way that allows the reader to visualize its changes over time. In many cases, geographical variations of those common names are included to improve our understanding about the name origins and their variations. In addition, this work provides the common names used for Venezuelan bird species in other languages within the continental and insular America (English, French, and Portuguese), a fundamental tool to establish their equivalences within the region. The book also compiles the bird names used by the 44 Venezuelan aboriginal groups, current and extinct, throughout the country history and across its geography. Wherever possible, brief explanations about the name meaning and influence ofover many of the ethnic groups involved are provided. This information is complemented with each bird scientific name, both at the species and subspecies levels, together with an explanation of its etymology and the bird characteristic that the scientific name intended to highlight (homology). In a broader sense, this book describes the etymologies that various authors have proposed for each scientific name in their search for the most appropriate one. This description of the names etymologies is firmly based on an exhaustive literary revision, which in many cases covers documents dating back to Ancient Greece to the present. This book also includes the changes in scientific names for each Venezuelan bird species since its description; changes that have been the result of continuous revisions in avian taxonomy. In those cases where a scientific name honors a person (eponymous) associated in some way with the history of Ornithology, a brief biography is provided. Finally, this book compiles many popular and road trip stories associated with the names given to birds in Venezuela. Altogether, this work constitutes an unprecedented effort to preserve the cultural and scientific heritage of Venezuela.
