There is a well-known phrase by the French philosopher George Steiner that says: ‘what cannot be named, does not exist’ and that was precisely what Raül Aymí, Rafel Cebrian († 2021), Jordi Clavell, Manuel-Enric Giménez and Àlex Mascarell might have thought when in 2012, all of them coming from different areas of knowledge of nature, got together to name all the birds of the world in Catalan, following the master list of the ‘Handbook of the birds of the world’ by Lynx Editions. They immediately realized that in order to rigorously carry out such a monumental task they had planned, they had to take into account the scientific advice of the people at TERMCAT.
From that moment and progressively, this team of people, with the help of new additions such as Ponç Feliu, homogenized criteria and created new ones to be able to name all the 11,166 bird species that live on our planet. Now that the work is already finished, Glòria Fontova (TERMCAT) and Àlex Mascarell will present us this online dictionary that collects the name in Catalan and the equivalent in Spanish, English, French, German and scientific of 11,166 species of birds, from 243 families, grouped in 36 orders.
This is, really, one of those extremely rare cases that should cause a unanimous and unqualified feeling of pride in all the speakers of this language, given that there are very few of it in the world that allow to name all the existing birds.
