Ready, set, vote! Choose from these four names for falcon Annie’s new mate

Cal Falcons announced today the four finalists in its contest to name UC Berkeley’s newest peregrine falcon. The names — Archie, Galen, Morgan and Mulford — emerged as favorites from about 200 suggestions submitted by the public over the past few days through Cal Falcons’ social media channels.

With Annie the falcon’s previous mate, Lou, now missing for more than a month, another male falcon has flown into Annie’s life for the 2024 breeding season atop the Campanile. He’ll formally be named next Tuesday, Feb. 20, at noon, Pacific Time, after Cal Falcons volunteers tally up the votes that can be cast online here starting today. Voting ends at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 19.

Choose one of these names:

Archie, for Archie Williams (1915-1993), a Berkeley alumnus with a mechanical engineering degree who won a gold medal at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in the 400-meter race. He went on to become a civilian flying instructor at the famed Tuskegee Army Flying School and a U.S. Air Force pilot who flew missions during World War II and the Korean War. The Oakland resident was raised in a family that promoted Black civil rights, and he was the first African American on campus to run for student council.

Galen, for architect John Galen Howard (1864-1931), who as the UC’s supervising architect from 1901 to 1922 shaped much of the Berkeley campus. Among the landmarks built during his tenure were the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Greek Theatre, California Hall, Doe Library, Campanile, Sather Gate, and Wheeler, Hilgard, Gilman, Hesse, Physics South (formerly LeConte) and Haviland halls. He founded the School of Architecture and directed it from 1903 to 1926.

Morgan, for UC alumna Julia Morgan (1872-1957), a pathbreaking female architect who designed more than 700 buildings. She was the first female student to earn an architecture degree at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the first woman to get an architecture license in California. Her work includes assisting John Galen Howard with the Hearst Memorial Mining Building and the Greek Theatre, and designing Girton Hall (now Julia Morgan Hall, at the UC Botanical Garden) and, with Bernard Maybeck, Hearst Gymnasium for Women.

Mulford, for Walter Mulford (1877-1955), the nation’s first state forester and a UC forestry professor at Berkeley from 1914 to 1947. Mulford Hall is named for him. He was chief of the campus’s division of forestry, chair of the Department of Forestry and first dean of the School of Forestry. In 1915, he founded the Forestry Field Camp, an annual intensive program still held in Plumas National Forest to introduce students to natural resource management.

Sean Peterson, a Cal Falcons ecologist, said two of the most popular names that falcon fans suggested this week — the contest began on Valentine’s Day — were Galen and Morgan. Since 2017, Annie, Berkeley’s longtime female falcon, has raised chicks on the iconic Campanile, designed by John Galen Howard.

He added that, for years, there also has been a theme among the suggested falcon names, “for honoring the life sciences faculty at UC Berkeley. Annie, Grinnell, Alden and Lou were all named after people associated with Berkeley’s biology departments, so Mulford continues that theme.

“Archie was, in part, suggested as a way of honoring Black History Month.”

If and when falcon chicks hatch this spring on the bell tower — Annie typically lays eggs in early-to-mid-March — a contest will be held to name them that includes a special bid for children’s recommendations.