{"id":20350,"date":"2017-05-04T06:34:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T13:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20350"},"modified":"2017-05-04T06:34:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T13:34:25","slug":"apostrophes-last-bastion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20350","title":{"rendered":"Apostrophe’s last bastion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Amongst geographical\u00a0names, the possessive\u00a0is discouraged in favour of the plural. Around Kootenay\u00a0Lake, Johnson’s Landing<\/em> is officially Johnsons Landing<\/em> and Queen’s Bay<\/em> has become Queens Bay<\/em>\u00a0— despite no compelling\u00a0evidence for multiple\u00a0eponymous Johnsons or Queens.<\/p>\n

In ornithology, the possessive\u00a0still rules when it comes to\u00a0birds which have been named to commemorate the work of naturalists from earlier times.<\/p>\n

I pondered\u00a0this last Sunday while watching\u00a0three species with apostrophes in their names: Say’s Phoebe, Brewer’s Blackbird, and Barrow’s Goldeneye.<\/p>\n

The first two pictures shown below were taken during this observation, but to these are\u00a0added some other local apostrophized birds that I have photographed\u00a0over the\u00a0years.<\/p>\n

I do wonder if birds named after people will\u00a0be the apostrophe’s last bastion.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Say’s Phoebe was named for Thomas Say (1787 – 1834), an American naturalist.
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Brewer’s Blackbird was named for Thomas Mayo Brewer (1814 \u2013 1880), an American naturalist.
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Steller’s Jay, which is the provincial bird of British Columbia, was named for Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709 \u2013 1746), a German naturalist.
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Barrow’s Goldeneye was named for Sir John Barrow (1764 \u2013 1848), an English statesman.
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Clark’s Nutcracker was named for William Clark (1770 \u2013 1838), an American explorer, and territorial governor.
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Bonaparte’s Gull was named for Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803 \u2013 1857), a French ornithologist, and nephew of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Cooper’s Hawk (this is a juvenile) was named for William Cooper (1798\u20131864), an American naturalist.
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Wilson’s Snipe was named for Alexander Wilson (1766 \u2013 1813), a Scottish-American naturalist.
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Lewis’s Woodpecker was named for Meriwether Lewis (1774 \u2013 1809), best known as a leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the American west (1804 – 1806).
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Bullock’s Oriole was named for William Bullock (1773 \u2013 1849), an English naturalist.
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Forster’s Turn was named for Johann Reinhold Forster (1729 \u2013 1798), the naturalist on Captain Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific.
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Townsend’s Solitaire was named for John Kirk Townsend (1809 \u2013 1851), an American naturalist.
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Baird’s Sandpiper was named for Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823 \u2013 1887), an American naturalist.
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Swainson’s Thrush was named for William Swainson (1789 \u2013 1855), an English ornithologist.
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Lincoln’s Sparrow was named for Thomas Lincoln (early 19th<\/sup> century), by his friend James Audubon for no better reason than that he had shot the bird.
\n \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Amongst geographical\u00a0names, the possessive\u00a0is discouraged in favour of the plural. Around Kootenay\u00a0Lake, Johnson’s Landing is officially Johnsons Landing and Queen’s Bay has become Queens Bay\u00a0— despite no compelling\u00a0evidence for multiple\u00a0eponymous Johnsons or Queens. In ornithology, the possessive\u00a0still rules when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20350"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20384,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions\/20384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}