Yup, it’s Tengmalm to the Europeans. He was huge in the nature scene in the 1780s, and really liked owls, so after really improving the owl documentation of the day, they honored him by naming this owl after him (Strix tengmalmi). It turns out he was not the first to have documented this owl as it was originally though, plus it’s no longer in genus Stix, and now it’s in genus Aegolius established 1829, and has its original species name funerea, but the Europeans got used to calling it Tengmalm’s Owl, so they just stuck with it.

As cute as these little owls are, Aegolius is from the Greek aigōlios meaning “a bird of ill omen” and funerea is from the Latin funereus, meaning “funereal.” That’s one heck of a dark name for this cutie pie!

The ones in the US and Canada are technically a subspecies Aegolius funerea richardsoni, aka Richardson’s Owl, after Canadian naturalist John Richardson.