The genus name Melopsittacus comes from Greek and means "melodious parrot". The species name undulatus is Latin for "undulated" or "stripe-patterned". So basically, budgies are little singing striped parrots :)
John Gould and his "warble grass parakeets"
There are several possible origins for the English name "budgerigar":
- A mispronunciation of the Gamilaaray gidjirrigaa, possibly influenced by the Aboriginal slang word budgery, which means "good to eat".
- A compound of the word budgery ("good") and gar ("cockatoo"). We already know why the Australian Aborigines gave the budgies that name - they used to eat them >:(
There's a range of alternative common names for our little budgies (most of them are Australian namings I think):
- Shell Parrot/Parakeet
- Warbling Grass Parakeet (Gould's common name for the birds)
- Canary Parrot
- Zebra Parrot
- Flight Bird
- Scallop Parrot
- alternate spellings Budgerygah and Betcherrygah (Aboriginal name)
- "love birds", because of their habit of mutual preening