Sions don't exist anymore and when they did, they were famous for their Reds with the dark eye.
WOW !
You are very direct !
No beating around the bush with you.
Depending on the context, I think I should have to agree with you. But, that context can be a hotly debated issue, particularly from all the "Sion" owners with their framed pedigrees, who might just place great value in the
name which has been assigned to their pigeons. Besides, if they look at it from a marketing perspective, they know their "Sion" birds will be worth less if they can't have that name attached to it, maybe a lot less.
While it also opens the door for debate as to what is or isn't a "pure" line, of which others claim there is no such thing as a "pure" line. I think to be intellectually honest with ourselves, then the name of the strain should be hyphenated with the breeders which followed the original master. Such as Janssen/Smith, if Mr. Jassen is the starting point, and Mr. Smith is breeding 2nd generation. Or in the case with the strain mentioned the Sion strain might look like Sion/Heitzman, Ressel, Ganus, Smith..etc...etc... In which case, listing the breeders who were making the selections along the family line.
What happens in the pigeon game, is if you tell a guy that his family line that he maybe has been working with for decades, is not what he says it is, then you are just setting yourself up for a fight. He will be insulted, because he has invested a lot of emotional energy into the name of some pigeons. You may be intellectually correct, but in the wacky pigeon world, you may actually make an enemy for life. Any other idea you may have, will be dead wrong from the get go. Because in a strange sort of way, you basically are calling his pigeons a bunch of bastards, because you are saying they are not descended from birds which once were owned by a great pigeon master in a previous century.
It does perhaps beg the question, of what do people really mean, when they ask for the name of a strain, when asking about a family of pigeons ? But, I digress, and the subject of this thread is how many strains are there out there ? If we apply one of the definitions " the body of descendants of a common ancestor, as a family or stock. " then there must be many...many ...tens of thousands of strains out there. Perhaps there are more strains then there are numbers of fanciers as I would really have to ponder the math of this question.
I thought I would add this link:
http://www.racingpigeonmall.com/auction/Ad_Schaerlaeckens1.html Where Ad gives a few of his thoughts on this "Strain" name business.
