Yes. Not in any one, predictable manner, mind you. The example you cite is just one instance and you won’t get any argument from me about it.
My problem, to the extent that I have one, is with iNat policy that requires the use of novel vernacular names in contexts that mostly have zip to do with vernacular usage. Government agencies and academia publish even an abjectly idiotic name for a newly described species and presto, that’s the name. A bunch of folks who call vultures buzzards and herons cranes have another well-established monicker for an organism that is also a name for a wholly unrelated, very different species and it is expunged from iNat.
Whatever stupid, novel name has been hatched by the nameless bureaucrat annoying Chris, I have no problem with iNat refusing to use it. In fact, I am all in favour of iNat having a policy stating that bureaucrats and academics should be prohibited from inventing vernacular names, mostly because they have such an abysmal record. If it were up to me anybody looking to name something should be able to post on this forum and ask people what they think would be good, the whole Boaty McBoatface thing notwithstanding.
And actual vernacular names should not be removed, however misleading. The point of iNat is to facilitate learning and that means engaging people where they are in language they understand.
“functionaries” and “bureaucrats” and “academics” are people and naturalists too. I speak from experience!
And I’d need convincing to accept that their (our) record is any more abysmal than any other labeled group. Let’s be careful not to generalize about people based on their group membership(s).
I will agree that agency initiatives to fill in a common-name box for every single species are often misguided, especially if not accompanied by thorough research of external sources and constituencies.
The appropriate “academic” would know right away that “jaw-leaf” is an incorrect translation of “malacophyllus” and would also know that it was indeed an attempt at translation of the scientific name, and therefore less likely to be a true vernacular name.
The point being – as I understand it – that iNat is working at cross purposes regarding their common name policy. But also – related to the thread title – that lots of common names are “deceptively incorrect,” and how do we decide which ones to let go?
No argument from me on that. But according to iNat they are a cut above the rest when it comes to inventing vernacular names, which makes no sense whatsoever.
Alas, we can only guess, insofar as the alternatives don’t get to engage in the exercise these days. I will say that the back catalogue of vernacular names that come from actual vernacular contain a great deal more wit, imagination and poetry than anything that any of the named groups ever seem to come up with.
Ultimately, the notion that common/vernacular names should be determined by specialists flies in the face of history, to say nothing of logic. Vernacular is vernacular. If the experts want to get into giving names other than binomials they are free to do so in their capacity as garden variety naturalists on the same footing as the rest.
It’s unfortunate that the name Common midge is causing issues but the problem is not with common/vernacular names. It is a problem created by iNat policy favouring made up names that are made up by putative experts. My annoyance is partly with the policy and partly with the way it is applied on iNat, where legitimate vernamcular names can be suppressed if a curator decides that they are confusing. Vernacular names are confusing. That’s why scientific names exist.
I’m not sure where the line should be drawn of what common names are considered acceptable. For the pocket gopher species Geomys pinetis we have the widely accepted common name (perhaps it can be called a standard English name), Southeastern Pocket Gopher. We also have Sandy Mounder, a vernacular name that iNat lists. And then there’s the other vernacular name, Salamander (not in the iNat names list) which is deceptively incorrect. I’m good with the first, just okay with the second, and definitely would not want to see the third.
Oh, and I should mention that for true salamanders, the vernacular name Spring Lizards is included in iNat. Although they aren’t lizards and certainly aren’t pocket gophers.
I would like to point out that my original question in this thread was
It’s very clear that the preferred solution requested would not involve deleting the name entirely, and instead leaving it in iNat and available for searching while reducing confusion. The thread is asking users for constructive suggestions about how to accomplish this, of which there have been several that do not involve deleting any names.
Disagreeing with iNat’s general approach to common names is fine, but that’s not the focus of this thread. This statement
isn’t quite correct. It so happens that the name I encountered is published by a government, but this general situation (only common name in iNat is incorrect and confusing), and any potential solutions, could and ideally would apply to a grossly incorrect common name from any source, even the proverbial yokels. I mentioned the fact that a government created the name to show a) that it had a reasonable source and had been added to iNat legitimately and b) that it is likely to remain in somewhat widespread usage, though perhaps if we are lucky, this
will occur. But broadly, I believe that most added and sourced names that are in usage, regardless of who/what coined them, should remain on iNat to increase usability by helping users find the organism that they are familiar with. However, the nature of common names means that some of them can also cause confusion, decreasing usability. So to me, this issue in a broad sense is how can we maximize usefulness by retaining incorrect names that some people do use, while minimizing confusion from those same names. The suggestions people have given for the specific situation above help do that in my opinion.
Right now, if you look under taxonomy for any given organism and there’s more than one English name listed, there’s no annotation to indicate which name is the widely-used (let’s call it the standard one) and which is used less often or part of regional vernacular. Or if both are widely used. That fix would require some changes in the names list formatting.
I have been working from the understanding that there are 2 lines. The defensible one is that the name is used in vernacular by actual people. The highly questionable one is that somebody has published something that says something like “this fish that used to be a bowfin but has now been hived off into a new species that is henceforth to be known as the eyetail bowfin even though the ocellus is not present in all individuals and the name sounds lame”. Or the whiskeyjack shall henceforth be the assigned the dreary appellation gray (sic) jay. Or any of the very long list of non-vernacular vernacular names you run into in academic and government publications.
Why incorrect? Because they aren’t mythological creatures that can live in fire? That is, after all, what a salamander is, is it not? I mean, some folks insist on calling those little lizardy looking amphibian thingies salamanders but that is also incorrect, obviously. Deceptively so?
Words in common speech are used in all sorts of ways by all sorts of people. The folks who call gophers salamanders use that word to signify what is known to science as Geomys pinetis. They could call them elephants if they wanted to. Or Airbuses or toothbrushes. They would, within the confines of the vernacular employed by them and their neighbours, be speaking a shared language or dialect where the words were perfectly correct. It is not up to anybody on iNat to tell them that they are wrong, to demean their speech or to censor their usage. Language is messy, mutable and imprecise in all sorts of ways. People need to get over that.
The context for which is sketched out more fully by the subsequent bullet point and discussion.
The point here is that an accepted name is to be “unaccepted” (thorough the back door, but still…) by curatorial discretion, even though the iNat policy anticipates no such thing. I don’t dispute that the iNat policy allows truly daft and/or stupid things to be accepted just because the proposed name was cooked up by a member of some “named group”. That, in fact, is the actual problem that needs to be addressed. As it stands, the rules effectively only apply when convenient and are ignored or circumvented when somebody decides that they are not. That’s a different problem that maybe also needs attention.
Sorry - slightly off topic.
Oxalis was livida - purple underneath the leaves. Tick.
Renamed back to the I Was First name which is dentata.
Where are the teeth? No teeth, but the first name rules.
For the toothbrushes, I value a common name which fits the organism
Toothbrush fern ?
Given Googling “Actinostola callosa” quickly gave me two sources using the name outside iNat and unrelated to the Canadian government, I’d the name is here to stay whether we like it or not. I recommend un-unaccepting the name and living with it, since no other common names seem to be available.
iNat lists 5 common names in English for this species, with no indication which is/are the “standard” (if I can use that term). The “standard” names are Eastern Musk Turtle or Common Musk Turtle. The vernacular names are Stinkpot, Stinkpot Turtle, and Stinking Jim. Maybe I should be offended by that last one, but I think it’s kind of neat.
None of these are “deceptively incorrect” and I don’t actually have a problem with any of them. But it seems there should be some way to indicate which names are the ones that herpetologists use and that typically appear in the scientific literature. If iNat is meant to be an educational tool, that distinction would be useful. The other names can remain but should be labeled somehow as alternative vernacular or regional names. Just my opinion.
Edit: I suppose the search function kind of makes that distinction, but the names appear to be co-equal when you look at the taxonomy page.
