A genus of small hummingbirds found in Central and South America, named for their jewel-like coloring.
The genus name likely derived from 'Amazon' combined with '-ilia' as a scientific suffix, reflecting the birds' South American habitat and connecting to Amazonian imagery.
Carl Linnaeus and fellow taxonomists named hundreds of hummingbird species after women (Amazilia, Calypte, Selasphorus)—a quirk of 18th-century science that embedded femininity into nature's finest jewels without anyone asking the women themselves.
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