JUST A THOUGHT
   

      Dear Friends,

      Some of the newer paleontology books have been referring to sabertooth tigers  as "saber cats" even "sword cats".

      It’s true that these large-fanged, slow moving felines (Extinct in the Americas  for about 12,000 years and in Europe for about 8,000 years) were not true tigers and that they were at the opposite end of the cat family from lions and tigers. However, replacing  a longstanding, traditional English word with new ones that are more scientifically acceptable is to me not always a good idea. I still love "sabertooth tiger" even if it is a misnomer. Interestingly, German still calls the animal Sabelzahntiger and Russian sabelzoobnee teeger. No political correctness there. What do you think?

     Sincerely,
     Brian Costello
   

The Swedish National Encyclopedia makes a distiction between the main group sabre tooth tigers and its subgroups, sabre tooth cats and dagger tooth cats (my translations).

I agree that familiar names should not be tampered with, unless totally misleading. You might end up with problems, like we had at least in Sweden, when suddenly some groups insisted on using Kampuchea for Cambodia. Well, in a rather short time, this fad was past, and now we are back to Cambodia (or, rather, back to Kambodja). The discussion on geographical names could go on forever…

Anders