Ardeidae

Chinese:

• Herons are called 鹭 lù in Chinese. The character 鹭 is made up of the phonetic 路 lù on top, and the character 鸟 niǎo or 'bird' underneath. Herons are also known as 鹭鸶 lùsī or 鹭鹚 lùcí. The term 鹭鸶 lùsī may also be narrowly applied to the egrets.
• Bitterns are called yán. The character yán is composed of a phonetic (a now disused form of the modern radical 开) on the left plus the character 鸟 niǎo on the right. Since this character is not found in Unicode, I have substituted the character 鳽 in this site, although this is actually a different character from . In Taiwan, the bitterns are known as 小鷺 xiǎo-lù ('small heron').

Japanese:

• In Japanese, herons are called サギ sagi, written with the same character as Chinese: 鷺. Egrets are popularly called シラサギ shira-sagi (白鷺) 'white herons', but the official names don't reflect this.
• Bitterns are known as ゴイ goi. The word goi is written 五位, meaning 'fifth rank'.

Vietnamese:

• In the official Vietnamese names, the larger herons in the genus Ardea are known as Diệc.
• Several of the smaller herons/bitterns are described as kinds of Vạc. Standing alone, Vạc refers specifically to the night heron, Nycticorax nycticorax.
• Other egrets, herons, and bitterns go by the name Cò , a general term which also covers storks and ibises.