Bird watching isn’t something we typically associate with racism. But in Sweden, members of the country’s Ornithological Society have just had to review the names of some of the country’s birds, which, they’ve discovered, carry distinctively racist titles.
Members of the Society discovered this recently when they decided to officially draw up the first ever list of over 10,000 Swedish bird names. Among the regular titles were words that hinted at Sweden’s less liberal past, centuries gone by when racist slurs were commonplace, as they were in many other parts of the world.
For instance, four Swedish bird names contained the word neger, which means “negro.” Another colorful bird was labelled the zigenarfågel, a name meaning “Gypsy.” In the European context, this word can be highly derogatory, as it’s used as an insult to describe the Romani people who live in the region, and who’ve been subjected to discrimination for decades.
A bird with the name of kafferseglaren, meaning “kaffirsailor” would make the average South African gasp in shock: “kaffir” is a deeply offensive term that was commonly used during the Apartheid years by bigoted whites to describe a black person. A duck that was long ago christened in Sweden as the “Hottentot” had to be renamed for similar reasons, as this term was used centuries ago to cruelly describe a southern African ethnic grouping who today are called the Khoikhoi people.
Fearing an outcry from Swedish citizens—many of whom are avid birders—the ornithological society diligently rechristened all the offending birds. Those with neger in their names were renamed svart instead, which simply means “black.” “Gypsy” birds were renamed “Hoatzins,” which is an English word that’s already used to describe the bird. The species whose name contained the abusive South African phrase was renamed as the far more innocuous vitgumpseglare, which means the “white-rumped swift.”
So now that Sweden is free of its racist birds, other countries are left to wonder just how offensive their animal names might turn out to be when they’re scrutinized, too.
