Sweden: Several birds found to have racist names – now they are being replaced

Speisa

Several birds with racist and offensive names are being replaced in an effort by the Swedish Ornithological Society.

The Swedish Ornithological Society has produced a list of Swedish names of all the world’s birds and found the names of several species racist and offensive, TV 4 reports.   

There is zigenarfågeln (gypsy-bird), negerfinken (negro-fink) and kafferseglaren (kaffer-sailor) who got new names. In the case of the kaffer-sailor, it has now been named vitgumpsseglare (vitgumps-sailor) because the word kaffer was deemed too offensive.

– It’s a very racist, especially in Africa. It is incitement to hatred in South Africa to use that word so we really needed to remove that name, says Erland Jirle, one of those who have been involved in developing the new names, TV4.

In addition to the racist names, bird names that previously have been directly translated from English have been updated on the list that includes nearly 1100 species of birds.

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