Pelecanidae

Chinese: The pelican goes by a number of names in Chinese. The standard common name is 鹈鹕 tíhú. Others are:

• 塘鹅 táng-é ('pond goose')
• 淘河 táo-hé ('dredge river')
• 伽蓝鸟 qiélán-niǎo ('temple bird')

Japanese:

• In Japanese, the standard common name is ペリカン perikan, borrowed from English.
• The Chinese form ガランチョウ (伽藍鳥) garan-chō (i.e., 'temple bird') survives mainly as an archaic variant.

Vietnamese:

• The standard common name is Bồ nông. The term Lềnh đềnh is a northern name.
• Other names include Trôi bè, Chằng bè, Thằng bè, and Cò mòng ('wild-duck heron'), the last two from Bui Phung's Vietnamese-English dictionary.

The distribution of the Pelecanidae in East Asia can be seen at Tzung-Su Ding's Distribution of Ciconiides in East Asia.

1. The split between P. onocrotalus and P. crispus is somewhat messy. Naturalists who split the two species use 白鹈鹕 bái tíhú 'white pelican' for P. onocrotalus and 卷羽鹈鹕 juǎn-yǔ tíhú 'curly feathered pelican' for P. crispus. However, some naturalists who do not split P. crispus use 卷羽鹈鹕 juǎn-yǔ tíhú for P. onocrotalus rather than 白鹈鹕 bái tíhú.

2. 塘鹅 táng-é is not listed in the Xiandai Han'yu Cidian, the most widely used Mainland dictionary of Chinese, which gives only 鹈鹕 tíhú and 淘河 táo-hé. The omission is most likely a deliberate attempt to exclude 塘鹅 táng-é, which appears to be a mainly southern word, from standard Chinese. However, 塘鹅 táng-é is still widely found in both Mainland and Taiwanese sources.

Also of interest is the way in which these three names appear to be connected. Both 淘河 táo-hé and 塘鹅 táng-é have more than a passing phonetic resemblance to 鹈鹕 tíhú, and both look suspiciously like folk etymologies, reinterpreting the name as 'dredge river' and 'pond goose' respectively.

As in many such cases, Chinese people are not terribly familiar with the pelican as a bird and are not aware that the two words 鹈鹕 tíhú and 塘鹅 táng-é are simply different names for the same thing. In one amusing case which I personally encountered, a tour itinerary drawn up by a Chinese travel agency for a trip to Australia included among its attractions 塘鹅 táng-é on the Hawkesbury River and 鹈鹕 tíhú at Tangalooma (Moreton Bay)! Presumably the agent did not realise that they were selling the same attraction twice. Nor did the person for whom the itinerary was prepared -- indeed she was unable to even read the characters 鹈鹕 tíhú.