Procellariinae

The Procellariinae (fulmars and shearwaters) are a subfamily of the Procellariiidae. Others are the Diomedeinae (albatrosses) and the Hydrobatinae (petrels).

Chinese: The fulmars and shearwaters do not appear to have well-established traditional names in Chinese. The word 鹱 hù is rare outside of modern Mainland sources, and unlike English or Japanese, is applied with scrupulous neatness to all and only members of the Procellariinae, including the fulmar. Before this tidy naming was arrived at, a system of names derived from English may have been in use (see notes).

The Taiwanese use 水薙鳥 shuǐ-tì-niǎo for the shearwaters and 穴鳥 xué-niǎo for the petrels, terms which are unmistakably derived from Japanese.

Japanese: The shearwaters are ミズナギドリ mizu-nagi-dori or 'water-shearing birds', written 水薙鳥. The middle character nagi refers to the action of 'mowing' or 'shearing', suggesting that the name was derived from English.

While ミズナギドリ mizu-nagi-dori is used for the majority of birds in this subfamily, Fulmar glacialis is known as フルマカモメ Furuma kamome or 'fulmar gull' and Pterodroma hypoleuca as アナドリ ana-dori or 'hole bird' (穴鳥 in characters).

Vietnamese: Apart from the Black-browed albatross, the only member of the Procellariidae found in Vietnamese waters so far is Calonectris leucomelas. Both birds are referred to as Hải âu, derived from the Chinese word for 'seagull' (海鸥 hǎi-ōu).

1. For some reason, the English common names divide the Procellariidae into the 'shearwaters' (Pterodroma and Bulweria) and the 'petrels' (Calonectris and Puffinus). This division is not followed in the modern Japanese and Chinese names, but does appear to have affected Chinese names in the past. The distinction is still followed in the Taiwanese names.

2. Chinese uses 鹱 hù for all members of the Procellariinae. However, there are some older, now rejected Chinese usages (not shown in the table) that are clearly modelled on English - see this site (Chinese only). According to the site:

• Some naturalists use 海燕 hǎi-yàn ('sea swallows' = 'petrels') for the Procellariinae. This usage is rejected by the author because 海燕 hǎi-yàn is already applied to the Hydrobatinae.
• Some naturalists apply the term 燕鹱 yàn-hù or 'swallow shearwater' to Bulweria bulwerii.
• Some naturalists are said to attempt to divide the Procellariinae into the ordinary 鹱 hù and the 剪水鹱 jiǎn-shuǐ-hù ('water-shearing hu'), corresponding to the division between 'petrels' and 'shearwaters' in English. This usage is found, for instance, at this website entry for Puffinus auricularis newelli.

These are interesting for the light that they throw on the process of bird naming. The rejected names imitate foreign-language models slavishly and have been replaced by regularised names following the scientific classification (e.g. the decision to reserve 海燕 hǎi-yàn for the Hydrobatinae).

3. The Taiwanese names use 穴鳥 xué-niǎo ('hole bird') for the 'petrels' in this group and 水薙鳥 shuǐ-tì-niǎo for the 'shearwaters'. Both are borrowed from Japanese, but Taiwanese naturalists have expanded 穴鳥 xué-niǎo to cover all the 'petrels' in the group. In Japanese, 穴鳥 ana-dori is restricted to the Bonin petrel. (Alternatively, the Japanese have extended mizu-nagi-dori to all members of the Procellariinae, keeping ana-dori as an exceptional usage.)

The Japanese verb 薙ぐ nagu, as found in mizu-nagi-dori, means 'mow' or shear'. The character 薙 is rare enough in Japanese but even less often encountered in Chinese, where it's pronounced tì. (It is usually replaced by the character 剃, also read tì and meaning 'to shave', in Mainland China.)

4. Japanese フルマカモメ Furuma kamome 'Furuma gull', written 古間鴎, is an ingenious rendition of 'fulmar'. The first two characters Furuma (literally 'old room') are a family or place name in Japanese. Kamome or 'gull' is added (somewhat inaccurately) to show that a seabird is being referred to. Native speakers are likely to mistake Furuma kamome for a native Japanese word, so ingeniously has it been converted. Ingenious or not, this method of naturalising foreign words is quite dated, being typical of the 19th century. If borrowed today katakana would be used (written フルマー to indicate a lengthened final vowel) and there would definitely be no kamome.