American Tautonyms

Puffinus puffinus and their ilk

Here are the 25 species of birds in North America whose scientific names are tautonyms -- that is, in which the two parts of the scientific name are the same. (Normally the scientific name is printed in italics, but because italics are hard to read on screen, the scientific names are shown here in plain type.)

Manx Shearwater	Puffinus puffinus
Red-footed Booby	Sula sula
Anhinga	Anhinga anhinga
Black-crowned Night-Heron	Nycticorax nycticorax
Whooper Swan	Cygnus cygnus
Harlequin Duck	Histrionicus histrionicus
Gray Partridge	Perdix perdix
Willow Ptarmigan	Lagopus lagopus
Corn Crake	Crex crex
Common Crane	Grus grus
Northern Lapwing	Vanellus vanellus
Black-winged Stilt	Himantopus himantopus
Black-tailed Godwit	Limosa limosa
Common Snipe	Gallinago gallinago
Dovekie	Alle alle
Common Swift	Apus apus
Eastern Kingbird	Tyrannus tyrannus
Black-billed Magpie	Pica pica
Bank Swallow	Riparia riparia
Winter Wren	Troglodytes troglodytes
Northern Wheatear	Oenanthe oenanthe
Northern Cardinal	Cardinalis cardinalis
Yellow-headed Blackbird	Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus
Eurasian Bullfinch	Pyrrhula pyrrhula
Hawfinch	Coccothraustes coccothraustes

The word tautonym comes from the Greek word tautos, which means "identical." Going back a little farther, tautos comes from two other Greek words -- to, which means "the," and autos, which means "same."

There are 57 other species birds in the world whose names are tautonymous, making a total of 82 bird tautonyms.

Incidentally, "ilk," as in the subtitle of this page, is another word that means "the same." It's of the same ilk as "tautonym."

All of the species listed above, plus the other 9,783 birds of the world, are found in the OmniList of Birds of the World.