Okay, in the “add name section” it states: “Try to add names that have been used elsewhere. Please don’t invent new names”. I assume this is to avoid creating confusion or arguments within the community about a name that one person thought would be cool (or to avoid external confusion). I was wonder…

Thanks for bringing up the topic of common names! If you scroll down below your post, you’ll see some suggested threads on the same subject — including one with nearly 200 replies. There’s a lot of great information there that you might find helpful: [Screenshot 2025-07-17 at 12.15.37 AM]

The proposal just seems like a system for names to be coined on iNat but with community voting. This would go against a lot of what staff have noted about not wanting iNat to a place where names are coined in previous threads (like this shown by Adam above). It also seems like such a system would be…

[image] reikoku: someone can suggest a common name. This can then be supported through… A legitimate approach would be for it to be supported through using it outside iNaturalist and seeing if it catches on. Then, each person who starts using it would be a “vote” for it.

Common Name Creation

General

Topic		Replies	Views
How to add common names? General question	20	1682	September 10, 2023
What does it take to assign a species a common name? Nature Talk question , taxonomy	21	1818	July 21, 2022
Inventing common names redux General	69	2316	July 5, 2023
Common names invented on iNat General common-names	193	12329	March 29, 2023
Interpretation of rule against invented common names General	86	1798	November 11, 2025

Common Name Creation

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