Bird-nomenclature in an East African Area

Abstract

During some years study of the birds of Tanganyika, I have, as opportunity served, collected the names used by the local people. Most information has come from Wadigo (round Tanga), Wabondei (inland from Tanga), Wasambaa (inland again), Wazigua (south of Korogwe), Wakami (North Uluguru), and Wambwera (Mafia Island), tribes whose languages evidently have much in common.Discounting tribal variants (for example, mpanja for pasa) and leaving for future consideration a large number of names that await verification, there are about 450 different roots and descriptive names that I have felt to be sufficiently well-established to include in a list for publication (1). Allowing for the fact that differentiation of species cannot be so particular by the ordinary countryman as by the ornithologist, I have names for some species, as many as seven, for a large percentage of the birds found in a strip of country about fifty miles wide and extending from near the Kenya border south to the Rufiji Delta. A few names extend right through our area; at the other extreme, however, some species change their names within the boundaries of a tribe, three or four times, for example, in the space of eighty miles; and hence there is no doubt that a great many more names remain to be collected.