Paridae

The Paridae under Sibley and Monroe include both the tits and the penduline tits.

Chinese: The tits are known in Chinese as 山雀 shān-què or 'mountain finch'. The penduline tits are known as 攀雀 pān-què 'climbing finch'.

(The character 雀 què was originally understood to mean sparrow but is more broadly used to refer to finches and other small birds. It is glossed 'finch' in this section and not 'sparrow-finch' as elsewhere.)

Japanese: The names of the tits in Japanese all include the form カラ -kara or its voiced counterpart ガラ -gara, which is always found in combination, never as an independent word. カラ kara is used in the names of the tits (Paridae) and the nuthatches (Sittidae).

カラ kara is written with the Chinese character (kanji) 雀, normally read ズズメ suzume meaning 'sparrow'. Since there is no suitable Chinese character with the meaning 'tit' or 'nuthatch', Japanese makes do by reading 雀 as カラ kara (or ガラ -gara).

The family Paridae is named after Parus major, the Great tit, known in Japanese as the シジュウカラ shijū-kara or literally 'forty tit', written 四十雀.

Vietnamese: The Vietnamese name for the tits is Bạc má or 'white cheek'. The Sultan tit (Melanochlora sultanea) is known as Chim mào vàng 'golden crested bird'.

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

1. The relationship between Chinese 山雀 shān-què 'tit' and Japanese 山雀 yama-gara 'Varied tit' is unclear. One may have been derived from the other, possibly Chinese from Japanese.

2. Cheng treats R. coronatus and R. consobrinus as subspecies of R. pendulinus ('Eurasian penduline tit'), which he calls 攀雀 pān-què 'climbing finch'. Howard-Moore 2003 notes the possibility of a division into three species, under which the Chinese species would be regarded as R. coronatus, to which R. consobrinus would belong as a subspecies.

3. For Vietnamese, Bui Phung's Vietnamese-English dictionary lists Chim sẻ ngô ('maize sparrow') as a name for the 'blue tit' -- possibly Azure tit?