The name marsh tern refers to

tern Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of e ...

s of the genus ''Chlidonias'', which are typically found in freshwater marshes, rather than coastal locations. The genus name ''Chlidonias'' is from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

, "swallow-like", from , "

swallow The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae, are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The ...

Species

There are four species: Notice the hesitation in the gender of the epithet of the scientific names, as they are usually masculine (''albostriatus, leucopterus'' or ''niger''), but in the case of the whiskered tern is mostly used as feminine (''hybrida''), maybe from the influence of the previous gender used, ''

Sterna ''Sterna'' is a genus of terns in the bird family Laridae. The genus used to encompass most "white" terns indiscriminately, but mtDNA sequence comparisons have recently determined that this arrangement is paraphyletic. It is now restricted to t ...

''. The

black-bellied tern The black-bellied tern (''Sterna acuticauda'') is a tern found near large rivers in the Indian subcontinent, its range extending from Pakistan, Nepal and India to Myanmar. It has become very scarce in the eastern part of its range and the Intern ...

(''Sterna acuticauda'') and the white-cheeked tern (''Sterna repressa'') might also be placed in ''Chlidonias''.

References

* Taxa named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque {{Charadriiformes-stub