Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Cormorant
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
== Names == "Cormorant" is a [[contraction (grammar)|contraction]] probably derived from Latin ''corvus marinus'', "sea raven"; in the early 19th century, the similarly derived spelling "corvorant" was sometimes used.<ref name=Yarrell/> [[Cormoran]] is the [[Cornish folklore|Cornish]] name of the sea giant in the tale of [[Jack the Giant Killer]]. Indeed, "sea raven" or analogous terms were the usual terms for cormorants in [[Germanic languages]] until after the [[Middle Ages]]. The French explorer [[André Thévet]] commented in 1558: "the beak [is] similar to that of a cormorant or other corvid", which demonstrates that the erroneous belief that the birds were related to ravens lasted at least to the 16th century. No consistent distinction exists between cormorants and shags. The names "cormorant" and "shag" were originally the common names of the two species of the family found in [[Great Britain]]{{snd}} ''Phalacrocorax carbo'' (now referred to by ornithologists as the [[great cormorant]]) and ''Gulosus aristotelis'' (the [[European shag]]). "Shag" refers to the bird's crest, which is conspicuous in the European shag, but less so in the great cormorant. As other species were encountered by [[English language|English-speaking]] sailors and explorers elsewhere in the world, some were called cormorants and some shags, sometimes depending on whether they had crests or not. Sometimes the same species is called a cormorant in one part of the world and a shag in another; for example, all species in the family which occur in [[New Zealand]] are known locally as shags, including four non-endemic species known as cormorant elsewhere in their range.{{fact|date=September 2024}} In 1976, [[Gerard Frederick van Tets]] proposed to divide the family into two [[genus|genera]] and attach the name "cormorant" to one and "shag" to the other,{{sfn|van Tets|1976}} but this nomenclature has not been widely adopted.{{fact|date=September 2024}}
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)