“A bird by any other name: a history of European attempts to understand the relationship between penguins and auks.”

• In Event: Creaturely Chronicles: Histories of Animal-Human Relations

Abstract

This paper focuses on the processes through which Southern birds entered the Northern hemisphere’s cultural and scientific awareness—how they were named, classified, and categorized within the frameworks of western taxonomy. the early history of both the name “penguin” and the names applied to different types and species of penguins. I will address both scientific names and popular names given the birds in Northern languages, and how these names reflect not only perceptions of the birds, but also the processes of empire and globalization. I will also present the ways in which penguins were understood to be related (and not) to Northern auks. I will look at how mistaken understandings about the connections between both the living auks (and the extinct great auk) led to additional confusion of both language and image.

This paper is based on seventeenth- early nineteenth-century scientific publications, engravings, and publications from scientific organizations. I will discuss the ways in which the multiple types of penguins were slowly recognized as global connections allowed for not only wider collection of the birds, but also linked up local knowledge from multiple continents. This paper is part of a larger project examining how the North came to understand, value, and ultimately re-locate and re-imagine these Southern birds.

Author

• Ellen Arnold, University of Stavanger