Fringillinae 5

The distribution of the Fringillinae in East Asia can be found at Tzung-Su Ding's Distribution of Fringillidae in East Asia.

1. Japanese is rich in native names for the finches, much richer than Chinese. As a result, Chinese characters as used in Chinese are insufficient to represent the Japanese names. To overcome this, the Japanese were forced to adopt a number of expedients:

Take over the entire character compound for the corresponding Chinese bird and assign it to the Japanese word (e.g. 桑鳲 ikaru, 交喙 isuka, 花鶏 atori)

Assign idiosyncratic readings to characters that would normally be read differently (e.g. 猿子 mashiko)

Take an existing Chinese character and give it a new meaning (e.g. 鷽 uso, 鶸 hiwa)

Make up a new character (e.g. 鴲 shime, 鳹 hime, 鵤 ikaru, 鶍 isuka) -- these are claimed to be new characters, although some appear to exist in Chinese, also.

For more on this topic, see The use of Chinese characters (kanji) to write bird names in Japanese

2. Being less well endowed with distinctive names, Chinese uses compound words like 燕雀 yàn-què 'swallow-finch' and 朱雀 zhū-què 'vermilion-finch' or descriptive names like 金翅 jīn-chì 'golden-wing' and 交嘴 jiāo-zuǐ 'cross-bill'. This lack of distinctive names is not helped by the very large number of finch species that have been discovered.

It is further exacerbated by the way naturalists have regularised the common names (for instance, 雀 què is regularly added to the common names even where common usage omits it). On the positive side, this regularisation leads to a very tidy fit between common and scientific names. The downside is that Chinese names tend to be long, nondescript (although 'descriptive'), difficult to remember, and only loosely related to ordinary language.

3. The relationship of the (Mainland) common names to scientific genera is as follows:

4. The Mainland names use 锡嘴 xī-zuǐ 'tin bill' for Coccothraustes and 蜡嘴 là-zuǐ 'wax bill' for Eophona. However, a potential crossover in names becomes apparent from the Taiwanese name for Coccothraustes, which is 臘嘴雀 là-zuǐ-què 'cured-meat billed finch'. Interestingly, 臘嘴雀 could also be read xí-zuǐ-què (Taiwan reading) or xī-zuǐ-què (Mainland reading). In effect, the Taiwanese name is a bridge between xī-zuǐ (tin bill) and là-zuǐ (wax bill). In addition, Japanese uses the characters 蝋嘴 'waxbill' to write shime, the Japanese name of Coccothraustes coccothraustes. The two names xī-zuǐ and là-zuǐ thus appear to be related.

5. Vietnamese has far fewer species to name and thus names the finches in a much less systematic way. As noted above, the largest number of names is related to Sẻ 'sparrow'. Besides the finches, the word Sẻ 'sparrow' is used in naming the sparrows, the bushchats, and the buntings.