Thank you for your reply, Arman. Fully agree with you. Actually, renaming is just one solution to the problem of having identical common names for different species but does not have to be the only solution. Indeed, a pop-up warning that the common name is in use for different species when a user is uploading a sighting could prevent the misidentification and confusion on the uploading side. Another option is to disable users from naming a species when the name is already in use for another, with the disclaimer that ''Sorry, this name is already in use for X." or something the like.
Yes but see the last sentence in my initial post (quoting myself here, not sure if that is allowed):
Please note that different common names for the same species (such as Black-necked Grebe or Eared Grebe for Podiceps nigricollis) is not at all the point of this topic. The point is to avoid repetitive common names for different species.
Redundancy is inherent to common names because people who commonly refer to an animal do not regard taxonomy. If you are in North America and you see a Cervus canadensis cross your path, the most knowledgeable naturalist or outdoorsperson of the group will remark, “elk,” yet iNaturalist would have you believe these are more commonly referred to as “wapiti.” Sure, now we have a common name that no longer conflicts with what species the British call as an elk, but have we accurately appraised what “locals” would commonly call the species using that name?
Skilled identifiers know there are often multiple species with the same common name, and therefore rely on the unique Scientific names to eliminate confusion. It doesn’t stop us from identifying. We try to be careful choosing the right one. (Occassionally it leads to an “Oops! sorry I picked the wrong one!” moment.)
Not only can you change your settings to show common names in your preferred language or location, you can also change them to show only Scientific names - and not show those confusing common names at all.
I absolutely agree! I love learning new names, especially Scientific ones! But when my mind blanks on Houstonia caerulia, I type “Azure bluet” instead, and carefully select the flower, not the dragonfly. I find it amusing, rather than annoying, that there are at least two organisms with the same lovely name.
While I certainly hear “elk” more commonly, I also frequently hear “wapiti” used as a common name for that species.
Thank you for your enthusiastic reply. I know that a user can choose to display only scientific names but that was not my intention of this post. I have the common names on display in both English and Dutch (my native tongue) as well as scientific names, so whenever all three are given for a certain species, I will see all three of them, which is not confusing to me but super helpful and fun! However, this post is not about me nor about my language preferences. :) I wanted to discuss how to avoid duplicate common names as default/preferred name shown for different species (that are similar). Your example (and earlier by @jnstuart) of the Azure Bluet for both a dragonfly and a flower, and also the example by @jnstuart of ringtail being a mammal and a dragonfly are less problematic than three different butterflies, occurring partly within the same range, that are all quite specifically called White-rayed Metalmark.
Following my logic in the discussion quoted below, my suggestion is that this common name should apply to the family Tyrannidae (or more precisely to Tyranninae if iNat accepted subfamilies) rather than to the miscellaneous tyrannids that the name is used for.
I see that in the Yucatan those are the only 3 tyrannids that visually mimic each other, but I imagine if other Myiodynastes, Conopias, Myiozetetes, or Philohydor species were to show up there then they would be called the same name? Is that name also used for the Tyrannus kingbirds or do they have a different name?
If kingbirds, “xtakayes”, and small flycatchers all have different names in Maya then you could do something like the Spanish name for the family (Mosqueritos, papamoscas, tiranos y parientes). Each of the names in the list should come up when you search, and then a family-level ID would be applied which sounds like a suitable level to place the ID since the name refers to species in multiple genera.
I disagree. Kingdom Disagreement pushes the CID to Life - where obs go to die. 3 butterflies can be found and resolved by lepidopterists.
Just trying to follow what you mean first. If the plant Azure Bluet is (probably by accident) wrongly identified as the damselfly, and then corrected by an identifier to the plant (and the ID correction is ignored by the observer), this will produce a Kingdom Disagreement and thus push the ID all the way back to ‘‘Life’’ where probably nobody will pick it up anymore. If the ID of one of the three White-rayed Metalmarks is corrected to another White-rayed Metalmark it will only disagree on genus level and kick the ID back to the family where all of these three are placed (Riodinidae), where it is more likely to be picked up by people interested in ID’ing that specific family. I think this is what you mean, right?
In that case, I do agree with you that Azure Bluet for both a plant and a damselfly is indeed more problematic than having the same name for two (in my example even three!) butterflies. At the same time, this is actually a very good illustration of why I had wanted to make an argument in favour of avoiding duplicate (common) names for different species by renaming (one or more of) them!
@jorenvanschie, it seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how common names work. This issue is not fixable. iNaturalist cannot “decide” to fix common names as they are not an iNat thing. Common names are decided by culture, and then iNaturalist lists them as options so they come up when people search for them. If three species in Mexico are called the same by people, you cannot decide that they are not called the same anymore, you are erasing reality and also making it so the species doesn’t come up when a Mexican searches for it.
This is why you are being told again and again that binomial names (Scientific names) are the “solution” of this issue that is used by scientists around the world. The very point of them is to make sure you don’t have two things with the same name (there are some cases where this happened, by accident, but it is supposed to be fixed).
It doesn’t matter if it is problematic (which it is, sometimes), what you are trying to “fix” is akin to saying that we should change the colours of those three xtakayes so they don’t look the same since they’re not even the same genus. iNat cannot change the colour of the birds, the likeness emerged organically through evolution. In the same way, iNat cannot change how Mexicans call the three species, the name emerged organically through culture.
If by “we” you mean humanity at large, then yes, but for most people there is no incentive to do so.
If be “we” you mean the iNat community, then no, that’s not what this platform is about.
If you want to try to get a new name adopted on your own outside of iNat go for it. If it winds up catching on and actually being used by a significant portion of the ‘real world’ population then it will eventually find its way into iNat, but we don’t try to make that sort of change using the iNat platform as the base.
Personally, I do not mind that common names are varied, sometimes repeating, etc. That’s part of people’s cultures, let them be. That’s why we have scientific names… although even those have repeats as there isn’t a system in place to prevent plans and animals from sometimes sharing scientific names (this has been a problem in my area as there have been several instances where snails and butterflies have plants that share the same scientific name).
Here are my issues with this:
- There are more than 180,000 species of Lepidoptera in the world.
- Generating common names for all 180,000+ would be an enormous task.
- Birds have unique common names generated by a recognized authority consisting of highly trained and knowledgeable professional scientists that meet periodically to fix problems with the roughly 10,000 bird species in the world.
- I doubt iNat or any other group could develop a committee that had any interest in generating common names for every species of Stenoma sp., much less every other species in the order.
- Common names are used and re-used around the world. On my mountain, a titi is a white-faced capuchin monkey on the eastern side of the mountain and a Central America squirrel monkey on the western side. A titi is just a general monkey in many other countries. Don’t even get started on tree names where a single common name like mastate or copal can mean 5-50 different species of tree depending on what country you are in and what part of the country you are referring.
- I’m reminded of the comedy bit about the committee formed to abbreviate each state for the postal service but that never got past Alabama before there were problems.
As others have hammered the point already, I won’t bother with this duplicating scientific names.
Unfortunately, there’s confusion there too in the various genus names shared between kingdoms… (Todea? No, you didn’t want the fern, you wanted the beetle. Etc.)
I would suggest that it is more misleading to actively hide from “the people who need the common names” the reality that the same common name means different species to different people.
When someone types in the common name they know and gets a long list of different species, that is (or should be) an “ah-ha” learning moment. Whether that name is displayed by default for each of those species is beside the point. Now they know that they need to investigate further before deciding which (if any) species on the list applies to the observation in front of them. And they’ve also learned something about the reality and limitations of common names.
Common names are not meant to fit a pattern or fill a hole or be assessed as being “80% complete” or any such. This is the disconnect that I think (hope, really) is responsible for a few posts I consider extremely problematic.
I ask everyone to please think carefully about what you are posting. Then take one more moment to consider if it is ever justified to suggest changes to someone else’s culture, which language is, to suit the preferences, needs or desires for order or originality of outsiders.
As @LostinCR points out, even within Spanish, there are regional variances that are so specific that common names really need local determination for accuracy. What is a common name in MX might not be in CR. Or even elsewhere in MX! (So too with maya, which is even more diverse.)
Language is disorderly. It just is. It is also alive, so common names not only may differ place to place, they may also change with time. What should not change though is that they should always come from the local cultures themselves.
edit to add: I want to be clear, this is also true in English. What may be common in Canada might not be common in Jamaica might not be common in Australia might not be common in India, etc. So please do not be distracted by the fact that the examples are from the languages of where I live. Culture is local to everywhere.
(I just saw this. I think we cross posted.
To be clear, the Spanish spoken here is different and includes a lot of maya words. It is not clearcut Spanish or maya like you are thinking.
There are nature things that I do not even think have Spanish names, like xcatic, and things that everyone just uses the maya for, like toloc.
None of this is relevant to my point, see above, but I just saw your reply and I did not want to not answer you.)
- It remains not a good argument against people using the names they know and prefer. We are encouraged to add existing names in whatever languages we can. MANY people use iNat in their second, or third, language. iNat is worldwide and they have every right to find Their Name.
- Common names are oral history, to be respected and cherished.
- My uncle in Bristol was interested in history. He told me, when the Romans invaded, and asked the locals ‘What is the name of this river ?’ The Celtic answer was always Avon. Stratford on Avon, the Avon river - simply means river River. Think about your own placenames - I live along a list of traffic directions. Africa. South Africa. Western Cape. South Western Cape. Cape Town. Cape Peninsula. Nothing there has ‘meaning’ not even Africa !
https://theconversation.com/is-africa-a-racial-slur-and-should-the-continent-be-renamed-234740
I want to live in Camissa. Both names are Khoi-khoi - Place of sweet water. With Hoerikwagga. The mountain rising from the sea. Those would be meaningful names with long oral history.
PS AI says Lucy and I insist that language is disorderly and alive - and iNat should not attempt to ‘fix’ it 
I think you misunderstand how common names in iNat work, and what is being suggested here. Yes, organisms can have multiple names, and multiple organisms can share the same name. But from the list of common names, we can choose which one appears the default to minimize confusion with other taxa.
And common names which do apply to multiple species should in most cases be applied to the higher taxon rather than the individual species.
Actually, this isn’t what you’re arguing for, and you will continue to get a lots of push back whilst you fail to make it clear what you’re really arguing for.
What you’re really arguing for is buried two-thirds of the way down your rather long and detailed opening post:
This is makes an important distinction that is directly contradicted by the current title of your topic: “Avoiding identical common names for different species”.
In fact, you don’t want to avoid duplicate common names at all, or even rename anything. What you actually want to do is keep all the pre-existing names (whether they’re duplicated or not), but in certain cases add a new name which could then be made the default so as to help with the disambiguation of the displayed common name. That way, if someone new to iNaturalist searches for e.g. “White-rayed Metalmark”, they will still find all the species with that common name, but the displayed common name for each one of them might be something more specific.
There are numerous cases where this is has been done already: for example, both Pieris rapae and Pieris brassicae are commonly known (in English) as “Cabbage White” - but they are also known as “Small White” and “Large White” respectively, which obviously helps distinguish these two very similar looking butterflies.
I think your topic could be greatly improved if you changed the highly misleading title and added a TLDR; at the top which makes it much clearer what you’re actually arguing for. It might also help if you turned your topic into more of a question that asked under what circumstances it might be appropriate to add disambiguating common names. (Obviously it’s neither feasible nor desirable to attempt to do this for all taxa within iNaturalist, so it would be a mistake to make that the main focus of your topic).