In recent years and months, eBird has expanded its support for bird names in multiple languages, making it more accessible for users around the globe. Whether you know Pandion haliaetus as Osprey, Águila pescadora, inkwazana, or 鹗, your eBird experience can display bird names in your preferred language. With 15 new options since 2021, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology now offers bird common names in 99 languages and regional dialects – including 14 variations of Spanish, seven for French, and five for Portuguese! We can even customize spelling for you: if you want to use the official eBird/Clements names, but prefer Blue-grey Tanager instead of Blue-gray Tanager, be sure to select English (Malaysian) as your option.
Newly added (since 2021) languages for common names include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Telugu, French (France), Albanian, Odia, Portuguese (Angola), Kannada, Punjabi (India), English (Hong Kong), Chinese (Hong Kong), Spanish (Honduras), and Zulu. We also now have complete global namesets (* = almost complete; >97%) for Catalan*, Dutch, German*, French, Japanese, Polish*, Norwegian*, Slovak, Spanish, Spanish (Spain), and Turkish; Japanese, Russian, and Swedish have more than 92% of bird names translated, while Portuguese (Portugal) has 31%, Icelandic has 33%, Czech has 49%, and Serbian has 78% translated.
Three of these languages are new for 2024: Zulu and the two Hong Kong options, in English and Simplified Chinese. We also have had major revisions to Catalan and Dutch.
These updates are available on the eBird website and in the eBird App now. See the full list of available languages and learn more about bird common names in eBird.
Setting your preferred language for common names
You have the ability to change the displayed common name language. Select your preferred language for common names on the web in your eBird Preferences: https://ebird.org/prefs. These will apply to eBird.org, Macaulay Library, and Birds of the World. Within the eBird Mobile and Merlin Bird ID apps, set your common name preference under Settings and Account. Please note that settings for common names are separate from the language display on the mobile and web interfaces, so you may have to set it up to three times to get eBird (web), eBird mobile, and Merlin all to show your preferred language for bird names.
Become a volunteer translator
New common name languages are generated thanks to a dedicated group of volunteers that contributed their time and knowledge to translate bird names; we must update these at least once per year with our annual October taxonomic update. Interim updates are always welcomed as well. The Cornell Lab seeks to make birding resources accessible to people around the world. As such, we are always working on new updates to ensure eBird and Merlin can be used widely to share and document the wonders of birds for the global birding community.
Volunteer translators provide these names and are critical to the success of eBird and other Cornell Lab projects. Many thanks to our network of partners around the world for making more common name options available!
Do you want to help us translate Cornell Lab projects? Please fill out this form: Join the eBird translators team.